by Odienator
Summer’s here, and the time is right for a summary of all things cinematically summery. The living is easy, and our 5 for the day talks movies with central events occurring during the hottest, most nostalgic season of the year. So go out and find a beautiful someone, dance all night (come on, come on) and when you’re done, chime in with your own choices.
1. Meatballs (1979)- Summer camp is a rite of passage for some of us, even if mine was just a day camp where I won a prize singing a song about reefer. Ivan Reitman’s Genie-winning (that’s the Canadian Oscar) comedy presented unspoiled pangs of nostalgia mere months before Mrs. Voorhees hacked her way through Camp Crystal Lake. Before his quotable comic brilliance got Lost in Translation, Bill Murray could be counted on to bring a caustic wit and a merry prankster’s glee whenever he appeared onscreen. Though Caddyshack and Ghostbusters linger in more memories, Murray’s debut as Tripper Harrison carries more weight with me because his shtick had the luxury of being fresh. Who knew back then that practically every line Murray spouts from the camp loudspeaker (shades of Altman’s M*A*S*H) would be quotable?
Murray’s performance seemed bused in from another movie, but it keeps Meatballs from becoming too saccharine. His friendship with camper Chris Makepeace is sweet without being gooey, and I can’t help think of this movie whenever someone says “It just doesn’t matter.” In addition to giving Val Kilmer a model to craft his brilliant turn in Real Genius, Meatballs also gave Dr. Pepper jingle singer (and American Werewolf in London star) David Naughton a hideous hit disco song called “Makin’ It.” (Naughton’s “I’m a Pepper” jingle, coincidentally, was the musical basis for my aforementioned award-winning Mary Jane song. “I smoke marijuana dontcha know,” sang 12-year old me, who had no idea what he was singing about. “Wouldn’t you like to be a pothead too?” Snoop Dogg owes me his career.)
2. Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)- I always believed that every female character Tennessee Williams created was really just a big ol’ drag queen. Williams may have written great roles for actresses, but I never believed any of his female characters were real women; they were painted with garish strokes better suited to an East Village revue than the Lifetime network.
Exhibit A: Suddenly Last Summer. (Warning: Spoilers galore.) We have Liz Taylor witnessing something so horrible that she is institutionalized. We have the victim’s cousin, Katharine Hepburn, walking around spouting overripe dialogue while wearing a hat that looks like the nest of a crack-addicted bird. And lest I forget, we have dark secrets, attempted lobotomy and cannibalism. Lifetime would have stopped at the dark secrets.
Kate’s son -- and La Liz’s cousin, Sebastian -- is a manipulative bastard who likes young boys. Kate and Liz pimp for him, attracting the boys with their looks (I can see Kate saying “you want this punany, RALLY you do.”) before Sebastian bribes them for favors in some bizarre sex-for-food exchange. Eventually, the boys got tired of going after Liz but getting Dick; so suddenly last summer, they ate Sebastian. Liz saw this and freaked out, losing her memory in the process. Kate and her crack-a-doodle-doo bird’s nest hat wants Liz lobotomized so she’ll never remember what happened suddenly, last summer. The flashback where Liz remembers what happened you-know-when must be seen to be believed. Liz says the title so many times that the movie plays like a recursive product placement. Billy Wilder said it best: “This picture will flop because it offends the vegetarians.”
3. Do The Right Thing. (1989) Spike Lee’s masterpiece takes place on the hottest day of the year, and Ernest Dickerson’s cinematography makes you feel how stifling it is. When the temperature flares, so do tempers, and Spike uses the summer day as the catalyst for examining how the daily interaction between races can boil over into anger and violence. Do the Right Thing offers no easy answers to Rodney King’s famous question (“Can’t we all just get along?”), nor does it let the viewer off easily. It’s the anti-Crash.
It’s funny how the Academy was so willing to honor Paul Haggis’ easy answer to the King question, but didn’t even bestow a Best Picture nomination on the most honest movie made about race in America. It’s as ironic as the film’s title. “Always do the right thing,” Da Mayor (Ossie Davis) tells Mookie (Spike Lee). “I got it, I’m gone,” says Mookie. But does anybody actually do the right thing in this movie? It’s a debatable question, one I’m still trying to answer 17 years after sweating it out in the theaters with Lee’s tragicomic characters.
4. Summer of '42. (1971) In the movies, losing one’s virginity is treated either as a triumph or the linchpin of nostalgic reminiscence. And, excepting oddities like Little Darlings (another cinematic summer tale with Kristy McNichol and Tatum O’Neal), deflowering is always told from the male point of view. It’s as if every woman in the world is as experienced as Body Heat-era Kathleen Turner or Stifler’s Mom, existing solely to earn eternal gratitude for touching the pee-pee of some innocent waif. It’s a raw deal for the women, if you ask me. I mean, my first time was more Biloxi Blues than Debbie Does Dallas. Fuck nostalgia; I look back and cringe. Think about your first time, and if there’s Oscar winning music and gauzy cinematography, you are full of more shit than a Christmas turkey. Either that, or you’re Summer of ’42 screenwriter Herman Raucher.
After scripting the squandered premise of Melvin van Peebles’ Watermelon Man, Raucher entrusted his autobiographical story to director Richard Mulligan (To Kill a Mockingbird). Summer of ’42 features a married woman (Jennifer O’Neill) whose husband is fighting in WWII, and a teenage boy (Gary Grime) who wants to get bizzy with her during the titular summer. It is full of the dishonest novelties of selective memory, flipping back and forth between the guy and his buddies and the guy and his (potential) booty. Better movies have been made about the first time, but for some reason, this one has a place in the hearts of the generation before me. Perhaps it’s Michel Legrand’s Oscar winning score or Mulligan’s knack for evoking times and places long since past. Whatever the reason, this was a big hit the same year a more honest loss-of-innocence film came out: The Last Picture Show.
5. Jaws- What exploration of summertime in the movies would be complete without the quintessential summer movie—in both senses of the phrase? Jaws takes place in the town of Amity, where, suddenly that summer, a great white shark turned the beach into its own personal Sebastian smorgasbord. The shark ruined the Amity residents’ summer, and the summer of plenty of moviegoers who were terrified to go into the water after viewing it.
In Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, Peter Biskind tells an anecdote about an audience member’s reaction to Bruce the Shark’s debut. A guy stumbled out of the auditorium where Jaws was unspooling. He stood in the lobby for a second before throwing up. After puking, the guy turned around and went back into the auditorium. Biskind says that moment was when Spielberg and company knew they had a hit. Jaws went on to gross (and gross out) plenty, and created a Pavlovian response to John Williams’ theme music. Once, down the Jersey Shore, I brought my boom box to the beach. I popped in a tape of the Jaws theme and blasted it as loudly as my radio would allow. People actually got out of the water, and the lifeguard asked me to leave.
Happy summer madness, everyone.
Thursday, June 22, 2006
5 for the day: Summer
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19 comments:
Great subject, Odienator! My five, in the order they come to mind:
1. Eric Rohmer's the Green Ray (1986) For Rohmer, Summer is not just a season, but a condition of life. The opportunity we must not let slip by.
2. Rear Window (1954). Summer in the city: finally, we have a little time away from the rat race to stop focusing in on our own lives so obsessively, and take an interest in our neighbors. On second thought, maybe that's not such a good idea in Hitchcock's universe.
3. Blissfully Yours (2002). Thailand, being so close to the equator, doesn't have the long-day, short-night summers as we know them further North in the hemisphere. But Apichatpong Weerasethakul's two-movement sonata (allegro and largo) captures perfectly the anticipation of and the basking in a summer trip, featuring the sun as a main character.
4. Sunrise (1927) Probably the best film ever made about the residents of tourist towns who have to live every day with the consequences left in the wake of vacationeers who can take the next train home on the merest whim.
5. Lucas (1986) The first half of David Seltzer's film is sweetly-observed childhood. Then it devolves into a Hollywood cliche, parallelling how freedom of summer vacation contrasts with the disappointment of the school year.
Brian, your blog title is perfect! I'm currently going through Hell on Frisco Bay!
I really enjoyed Lucas, even after it went all Hollywood cliche. And you're right about Rohmer's summertimes.
I haven't seen Blissfully Yours, but I would kill to see an opening credit that says "and introducing The Sun."
The one that jumps immediately to mind is the faithful, sweet-sad-funny film version of Terrence McNally's Love! Valour! Compassion! It's about a group of friends, all gay men, who come together at a lake house for the three summer holiday weekends. Wonderfully acted, and it really nails the sense of those long summer weekends - waiting out the rain, communal dinners, divvying up rooms, late-night conversations.
Good Lord- I remember when they turned that crappy song Makin' It into the crappy TV series too....
http://imdb.com/title/tt0078647/
I did not think either one was crappy at the time, however, because I was a mentally challenged child who enjoyed craptastic programs like Happy Days & Welcome Back, Kotter.
ACK, Dale!
I had completely forgotten about that series. Since you brought it up, Hollywood's going to make a movie out of it now!
I still enjoy craptastic Welcome Back, Kotter. Movie for that coming soon too...
T&C: I saw a stage production of L,V,C! (I'm a lazy ass typist today) as well as the screen version. It was better than the screen translation of Frankie and Johnny. (Michelle Pfeiffer's supposed to be ugly? She's way too thin, yes. But Ugly? Methinks not.)
Since they're into Lake Houses, the gay dudes of LVC! should interrupt Keanu and Sandra at their Lake House! I think I can sell this idea to H'wood: People fall in love across time; woman advised by the ghosts of a slew of gay men who spent their summers in the same Lake House. A new summer classic from OdieNator Films and Mel Gibson's new company, OverJesused Pictures.
I think I screwed up in my post up there. I now recall that Liz isn't married to Sebastian; she's his cousin.
Fixed it, Odie.
I'll check in later tonight with my own list. Suffice to say DO THE RIGHT THING will be on it -- how could it not be?
Odienator - I haven't had the pleasure of seeing L, V, C on stage, but I've read the play several times. Just from a read, the film seemed pretty faithful. And Kathy Bates' eventual success as a Hollywood actress (if never a real star) must have been real sweet - she was not just the original stage Frankkie (losing the part to Michelle Pfeiffer for teh film), but the original lead in 'Night Mother as well (losing the part to Sissy Spacek for the film).
Thanks, MZS! I'll tell Dirty Harry that you feel lucky, right after I take another Bullitt-like drive down the Streets of San Francisco (with Karl Malden...in color!)
Does anybody wear socks out here? Jesus H. Christ! If I see another "The Dude" wearing a sandal or flip-flop, I'm dancing "The Roach" on his feet.
I didn't live through the Summer of '42, but I did live through the Summer of Sam. I would have mentioned the movie version of that, but if we're talking Lee and summer, there really is only one choice.
Several other movies come to mind, but I'll wait to see if our other House visitors mention them.
T&C: [Kathy Bates] was not just the original stage Frankkie (losing the part to Michelle Pfeiffer for teh film), but the original lead in 'Night Mother as well (losing the part to Sissy Spacek for the film).
And she was more appropriately cast than both of the actresses in the movie versions.
Bates figures in a big summer scene in the underrated movie version of Stephen King's Dolores Claiborne. At least, I think that film's solar eclipse occurs in the summer. It's been a while since I've read the book and seen the movie.
First, I must second, or third the choice of the masterful Do the Right Thing, which is by far the best Spike Lee Joint I've seen. I'm beginning to think confinement within at least some of the Aristotelian Unities is what it takes for Mr. Lee to make a good movie. That's one reason I still have high hopes for a few of the Joints that I haven't seen, like Get on the Bus. Those unities in Do the Right Thing would of course be unity of time(1 day) unity of place(1 street) and the unity of "Damn, it's hot!" Ernest Dickerson really lays it on with those filters to good effect. I wonder what the temp really was when they were filming. Surely this movie owes at least a little something to
2. Car Wash, although no one turns the car wash into an inferno, and the only bomb thrown turns out to be "piss." Did Joel Schumacher really write this one? On a technicality, someone might call me out for this pick because I can't remember if the day in Car Wash is supposed to be during summer.
3. Stray Dog - The credits open over a dog panting and the rest of the movie is one hell of a hot japanese summer. Plenty of fans going in this one, both electric and handheld.
4. In the Heat of the Night - Haskell Wexler's camera really captures the atmospherics of a small town on the Mississippi. "Do you know where the coolest place in town is?"
5. The Endless Summer - This documentary about an endless quest for bitchin' waves is a laid back classic. It works for me like a nice air-conditioned nap on a summer day. It will take a better writer than I am right now to describe the qualities of Bruce Brown's narration in only a few words. Surf's up.
Thanks, MZS! I'll tell Dirty Harry that you feel lucky, right after I take another Bullitt-like drive down the Streets of San Francisco (with Karl Malden...in color!)
Holy cow! Odienator almost treated us to a special 2 in 1, 5 for the Day with that - the bonus barbary coast edition. It reminds me of how I suspected Foul Play when Nash Bridges shut down BART for 48 Hrs. to hunt for The Maltese Falcon, and my Basic Instinct was to ask "What's Up, Doc?"
Don't worry, Odie, Meatballs hasn’t been forgotten in this neck of the woods. “It just doesn’t matter!” still means a little something where I’m from.
Cool Hand Luke – gauging by the amount of sweat, I’d say it was summer. This movie is really focused on heat and endurance – oh yeah, and sweat-drenched yearning. “Come on safety pin!”
Do the Right Thing has to be on the list for reasons already given.
“None Like It Hot” – it’s a MASH episode, not a feature, but that’s okay, right? I mean, I’ve seen cartoons listed on these threads. Are we playing strict rules? It’s the one where Hawkeye and Beej get ahold of a portable bathtub from Abalone and Finch during a hellacious Korean heatwave. They try to keep it to themselves, but word gets around camp. You want jokes about heat or being hot? Look no further. If I recall, Hotlips had a rash and Klinger was in a weight-reducing suit, trying to get his [altogether now] Section 8.
Anything Sergio Leone and Western. Again, judging by the sweat. Plus, my memories of the trilogy include hot summer nights watching bleached out grainy prints on the UHF channel. If forced to pick just one, it’d be The Good, Bad & Ugly, if for no other reason than it has got the largest sweaty pore count of the bunch.
Almost anything Ozu, especially if it’s got Summer in the title, but not just those. Characters are constantly commenting on the heat or at least fanning themselves. “Atsui desu nehhhh,” (hot, isn't it?) one will say. "Desu nehhhhhh." (isn't it) the other would answer. Just as casual as you please. The film I was thinking of was Floating Weeds – the later color version. Open relaxed kimonos, bright blue sky – it just looks hot…in a subtle way, of course.
Which brings up a question. Of all the Ozu films depicting heat, I thought of the color one. And the yellowed bleached out prints of the spaghetti westerns really seemed to emphasize the heat. All but one of Odie's pics was color. The same for brian and wagstaff. Is color more effective at portraying heat than black & white?
Jeffrey: Is color more effective at portraying heat than black & white?
That's an interesting question!
I'm racking my brain for b&w movies about hot weather. Nothing jumps out at me the same way color represents the heat. I recall people sweating in numerous noirs, and I even recall an old movie with an actress (Jane Russell?) fanning herself in front of an open icebox. Maybe that last one is a dreamy remnant of my childhood, when Jane Russell did commercials for the Playtex 18 hour bra--the bra that took 18 hours to talk a woman out of it.
Something will strike me sooner or later.
Some additions and affirmations:
Do the Right Thing
It deserves every vote it gets.
Rear Window
What Brian said.
Wet Hot American Summer
Not exactly a teen summer movie in the mold of One Crazy Summer, but I'm a sucker for a summer camp movie where just about all of the characters are tremendously pale and pasty. And where Paul Rudd throws a tantrum.
Stand By Me
Because summer's all about growing up.
Passion Fish
I was going to say something about how Sayles captures the slow pace of summer, but now that I think about it summer seems important in many of his films: Lone Star, City of Hope, Sunshine State and Men with Guns all come to mind. If City of Hope is all about the tensions of summer in the city, Passion Fish is about learning to relax in the summer in the country.
In a similar vein, doesn't Paul Newman sweat significantly or provacatively in Hud, Cool Hand Luke, and The Long Hot Summer? Because of when I saw them, these movies, along with Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, always evoke oppressive summer heat. But as he's aged Newman has also cooled off and headed east via Slapshot, Absence of Malice The Verdict, and Nobody's Fool. He's more of an autumn guy, now. That's how he ended up in Empire Falls.
Anon
In interviews Ingmar Bergman has said that bright, harsh sunlight and heat gives him a bad case of the heebiejeebies. I haven't seen it, but his Summer with Monika might make a good test case for B&W heat/sunlight. Also, Sahara with Humphrey Bogart sure looks mighty hot...and dry...and thirsty.
The brightest white in b&w, even just a lamp projected through transparent celluloid, seems less bright to me than a frame with some color in it -a blue sky or yellow sunlight. White can be bright, but only color gives you warmth. Think of those painters who, when you look closely, use many tiny colors to convey on big one. I guess color and b&w are almost two completely different art forms. Makes me wonder about that fad in the 90's where films would switch back and forth willy-nilly within a scene (a la Natural Born Killers) rendering b&w and color almost moot. What was the purpose of that? Still, the heat in Stray Dog comes across as awfully stifling.
Anon: Stand By Me
Because summer's all about growing up.
What a great choice! I was hoping someone would mention Stand by Me. Of course, the computer guy/writer in me cringes every single time Richard Dreyfus turns the computer off at the end, without saving his story. I want to yell out "No, Rich! You didn't SAAAAAVE! NOOOOOOO!"
I wonder if Rabbit Season is in the summer...if so, we can add the Chuck Jones trilogy of Bugs vs. Daffy vs. Elmer cartoons (Rabbit Seasoning, Rabbit Fire, and Duck, Rabbit, Duck) to the mix. Pronoun trouble indeed.
I always thought hunting seasons were in the Fall, but that could be just city boy misinformation. Of course there are Looney Tunes explicitly set in the summertime. The first that comes to mind is Ali Baba Bunny also from Chuck Jones. It isn't quite as good as the Bugs/Daffy/Elmer Hunting Trilogy, but it's close.
Bwian, wabbit season wuns from November to Mawch, accowding to a website I wesearched. So you aw wight, huh-huh-huh-huh!
-Elmer
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