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Have You Seen…? Episode 37

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David Hast and WGVU’s Scott Vander look at two movies from Peter Bogdanonvich; “What’s Up, Doc?” and “Paper Moon”

David Hast: Scott, have you seen What's Up Doc?

Scott Vander Werf: I have seen What's Up Doc. The first time that I saw this movie was probably not when it first came out because I was too young. I wouldn't have seen it in the theater, but as soon as it was on television in the 70s, I would have seen it. It came out in 1972. And then I saw it maybe a couple times, but then I haven't seen it in pretty much almost 40 years until recently.

DH: Well, What's Up Doc is a hilarious comedy from Peter Bogdanovich, who we did another show about in one of our previous episodes. We talked about his acknowledged masterpiece, The Last Picture Show, which came out in 1971. But then he followed it up with a couple other great movies, What's Up Doc in 72 and Paper Moon in 73. And-

SVW: Three very distinctly different films.

DH: Yes. distinctly different and we've even talked about his very first film which he did for Roger Corman Targets which is distinctly different from the other three as well. Peter Bogdanovich loved movies and knew a lot about movies, It's past tense now. He died just recently, not very long ago. I was lucky enough to see him showing at a small college showing John Ford's “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” and talking just about Westerns and Ford, but also talking about just Hollywood. And he was amazing.

Bogdanovich was this guy, he got a job at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, I think, doing film stuff. And then he just became a self-taught, he didn't go to college, he didn't graduate college in any case, and he became a self-taught writer, critic, movie historian, he interviewed John Ford, Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, and Orson Welles and then became a lifelong friend of Welles. And all his movies show this incredible love for the movies themselves and make references to the old movies. And What's Up Doc is no exception. The title itself, right?

SVW: It's from the Warner Brothers cartoons, it's Bugs Bunny.

DH: It's Bugs Bunny's line, right? And then the movie begins over the opening titles, Barbara Streisand who's...Barbra Streisand and Ryan O'Neill are the co-stars of this comedy. Barbra Streisand is singing Cole Porter's 1930s song, “You're the Top”. So the title, the old song from the movies, tips us off right away. And this movie is clearly a screwball comedy in the tradition of the great screwball comedies of the 1930s and 40s.

SVW: It is and it sort of mimics the sort of dynamic that you would see from Catherine Hepburn and Cary Grant.

DH: Right, there's this, you know, of course, screwball comedies are also romantic comedies always and right from the start, for no apparent reason, the Judy character, the Barbara Streisand character, you know, like is attracted to this guy and they meet cute, right? What I love about this movie too, I rewatched it again just a few days ago. I've seen it a couple times, but I hadn't seen it in a while. I don't think it's, it's not just a funny little movie in the tradition of Hollywood screwball comedies. I think it's one of the greatest comedies ever made. I mean, I just, I just, I just, it made me deliriously happy to watch this movie. It's so funny. It's so, the two of them together are just adorable and it's wacky and I mean, it has endless slapstick visual gags, plot reversals. It has Madeline Kahn in her first movie and she's amazingly funny. How do you feel about it?

SVW: I would agree and I would say that it's also a movie that it fits its time length. It's just a little bit over an hour and a half. I think it's 93 minutes long. It begins very quickly and before you know it, it's over and it's only an hour and a half and it works because there's no fat in this movie. Every single shot, every single scene is for the effect. And so it's either funny or you're drawing, you're being drawn into the two characters who are attracted to each other.

DH: It's basically, it's just this crazy mix up story. There's four plaid, like overnight bags that look identical and it's a simple gag, right? One of them has top secret documents. One of them has jewels, a rich lady's jewels. One of them is Ryan O'Neill, the main character. He's a musicologist who is looking for the musical sounds in rocks, and he has a bag full of rocks. And then the other stuff is just Barbra Streisand's like clothes. And they all get mixed up, because they're identical bags. And then there's just these endless gags in this hotel. They all end up in adjoining rooms on the same floor in the hotel. And there's these constant like the bags getting switched and then it all culminates in this crazy chase scene through shot on location with dozens of stunt people up and down the hills of San Francisco.

SVW: Yes, and so you get these classic car chase sequences, but also the people that are moving large panes of glass across the street or workers working in the street trying to do their jobs and, of course, the chase gets in the way.

DH: Yeah, just crack, they end up inside a Chinese dragon on a bicycle, hurtling down the street. There's just every imaginable gag that goes on. One last thing I wanna say too that I love, which is a little thing that Bogdanovich threw in there because he loves the movies. Ryan O'Neill's character, his name is Howard, but for no apparent reason, well, she doesn't even know his name at first, although he does introduce himself, but she basically right from the first scene they meet calls him Steve and she calls him Steve the entire movie. Which is straight out of to have and have not with Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart where his name is Harry, but she calls him Steve the whole movie.

SVW: And one thing that I wondered is her name is Judy,

DH: Yeah,

SVW: And because this is an homage to things like the screwball comedies with Cary Grant and there's the the sort of cliche that the people that would imitate Cary Grant would when he would say Judy Judy Judy,

DH: Oh, that's nice.

SVW: So I wondered if she was named Judy as it is sort of an homage to him.

DH: Maybe or Judy Holliday and she was one of the most wonderful comic actresses from the old Hollywood movies who knows. What about Paper Moon?

SVW: Well, Paper Moon is something that I'm more familiar with because I've seen it many times black and white film from 1973 with Ryan O'Neill returning as the star with his nine-year-old daughter Tatum O'Neill, who ended up winning the Oscar that year for her performance. And it's, it's just a gorgeously shot black and white film period piece during the great depression. It, in a way I'd say, cinematically it's very much more of a powerful, a greater film.

DH: Yeah. Cinematically it does remind you. I mean, it's like his masterpiece, the film he did before What's up doc?, The Last Picture Show,

SVW: Which was also black and white.

DH: Also shot in black and white. Apparently the stories that Orson Welles told Bogdanovich to shoot this movie in black and white, and Welles notoriously hated color. But yeah, and this one is set in the Great Depression, it's set in 1935, and it reminds you in its look of those Depression era photographs, these wide angle pictures from Walker Evans or Dorothea Lange, and it reminds you of a movie like Grapes of Wrath, which was made at that time.

SVW: And the lots of deep focus, the everything that's going on in the frame is highly detailed even though it's very simple. And then the dynamic between the father and the daughter, it's almost unreal that they're father and daughter because you would think that they're both just professional actors. It works so well.

DH: Yeah, I mean, it was Tatum O'Neill's movie debut and I believe she's still the youngest person ever to win an Oscar. She won it at nine years old.

And in the movie, you know, he plays this con man who's driving around Missouri and Kansas selling Bibles as a scam to people for way more money than they're worth. And she's this little girl whose daughter just died and no one knows who the father is. And right from the start, there's this hint that it might be him, but we don't know, right? So they're not really playing father and daughter, but sort of, yeah. And… So it's funny, isn't it?

SVW: It's very funny, but it's also very touching. And you really immediately care about the characters. And it ends up being a big road trip movie.

DH: Yeah, wonderful movie. You know, the three great Bogdanovich films, Last Picture Show, What's Up Doc, and Paper Moon in three consecutive years. And then after that, he had a string of box office flops and was forced out of the Holly. And you know, he also became the subject of scandalous personal life and tabloid headlines, and Hollywood wanted nothing to do with them and he had to produce films independently the rest of his life.

SVW: None of which really made the same impact. And then probably he was best known in the last 20 years as being one of the stars of The Sopranos, where he played the analyst for the mobsters analyst.

DH: Yeah.

SVW: And he was brilliant in it. He's a really good actor. He's in his first, his own first film, Targets, which we'll talk about later.

So thanks, Scott.

SVW: Thank you.

David Hast is a retired high school English teacher. He has an MFA in Radio/TV/Film from Northwestern University and worked 15 years in the film and video industry. Some years ago he taught video production part-time at GVSU, and as a high school teacher he regularly taught a course in Film and Media Analysis.
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