No Paul Mazursky thread?

dang, i really liked willie and phil it's meandering and has some dialogue that is clunky but all the performances and scenes are great and it's an interesting take on the jules & jim story. plus the sequence where they drop acid is classic - "I don't want apple juice, i want my hands to come back!"

also today, i watched i love you alice b. toklas...it was also pretty good! does this get pigeonholed as a stoner movie? i feel like it does but peter sellers is great in it, esp some of the scenes in the beginning

also, what is the damn movie they go to see and get kicked out of? it has a cougar-ish woman wearing crazy 70s sandals putting the moves on a young dude...idk, i know ive seen it and cant place it...

didnt realize willie and phil was not on dvd and so little talked about! i had erased it from my dvr but it is on again tonight on fox movie channel if anybody cares~

id love to be able to see 'alex in wonderland' - has anyone seen it?

did anyone see his recent documentary about hasidic jews going to party in the ukraine? i saw it in the czech republic and interviewed him about it... then never heard of it again.

also today, i watched i love you alice b. toklas...it was also pretty good! does this get pigeonholed as a stoner movie? i feel like it does but peter sellers is great in it, esp some of the scenes in the beginning

I watched this again a couple of weeks ago after I found it on one of my old vhs tapes. The first half of the film is definitely the best, it does downhill in a big way after the halfway point. Although I've seen it before, I realised I don't really understand the ending where (SPOILER) he walks out of his wedding again. Is his dropping out as a hippie meant to have been a dream?

have started reading his book show me the magic & it's fantastic!

Sellers wanted Fellini to direct Alice B. Toklas! also was a total crazyperson

then, unrelatedly, mazursky becomes friends w/ fellini!

"thank you, paolino, for bringing your child to the work of my life's blood so that she can snore at it."

blume in love was ok. kris kristofferson was really good in it.

couldnt find too much info abt it but apparently alex in wonderland is coming out on dvd NEXT WEEK. good thing i didnt break down and buy a $40 vhs copy

thinking it doesnt actually exist and i might be the lone person on the internet/planet who cares? i was sent this twice:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51-4jS%2BXKKL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

supposedly it was being distributed by Eyecon (?) but i cant really find jack abt that company!

http://img2.imagesbn.com/images/111840000/111845854.JPG

fun read so far

http://a2.mzstatic.com/us/r1000/033/Video/f2/e9/0a/mzi.wryagdte.227x227-75.jpg

can now buy this from warners or watch on itunes

he did an audio commentary for it that's ok. there is one o_O moment where he talks abt not liking reality television and predicts that w/in a few yrs ppl will be getting killed on tv and viewers will pay to watch

Harry and Tonto's nice. I don't think it really gets going till Carney and Melanie Mayron hook up, but lots of great bits after that: Chief Dan George (he's like an early draft of Kumar Pallana in Wes Anderson's films), Vegas (what happened in '74 to make gambling so topical? California Split, The Gambler, some of Godfather II), the old-age home, Burstyn and Hagman, the ending. Like any good road film, the story periodically steps aside for some painterly cinematography--inevitable, and I fall for it every time. (You could say that those scenes really are the story.)

As good as he is, I don't think Carney should have won the Academy Award. If voters had assigned rankings 1-5, I'm sure he would have finished behind both Nicholson and Pacino; obviously some vote-splitting (and Hackman in The Conversation wasn't even nominated). Still an amazing story. It was essentially his third film, after what looks to be very small parts in The Yellow Rolls-Royce (1964) and A Guide for the Married Man (1967) (haven't seen either). Even though he'd been around since radio and was famous because of The Honeymooners.

I wouldn't say Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice is dated, because I'm sure its limitations--the satire is telegraphed throughout--were just as apparent in 1969. Sometimes funny anyway, and the performers are clearly having a good time. (I liked Culp the best, although Cannon got the most attention.)

What I absolutely love is the ending. Whether or not it has anything to say--again, telegraphed, but I think the basic point is valid--I'm adding it to my ever-expanding list of how pop music should be used in a movie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frQ7Tna4LOU

(Larry Tucker pops up at the three-minute mark.)

I've had it on my DVR for months and keep putting off deciding whether to watch or delete it. (Ditto Carnal Knowledge.)

Watch them both, WC. They're about as definitively of their moment--mostly for better, sometimes for worse--as anything you'll find. (Hope the ending doesn't lose anything because of my post. It's not the kind of ending where spoiler crosses your mind.)

"What's piling up on your DVR?" might be an interesting thread, if we haven't already done it.

Timely revive. I finally saw Harry and Tonto last night (via Netflix disc service, and I say 'finally' because this was my second copy of it from them--the first was so cracked up the label was all that was holding it together). Really enjoyed it. Definitely one of those "Only in the 70s" studio films. Didn't we have a thread for "Christmas Movies that aren't 'Christmas' movies"? Because this would fit (the holiday is never mentioned, but decorations are littered throughout the set design, culminating in the sad little tree on Larry Hagman's kitchenette counter).

From IMDB:

In the original theatrical version, Norman (Josh Mostel) says to Shirley (Ellen Burstyn), "I like you too, Aunt Shirley, but you're a c**t." When the ratings board gave the film an R rating because of this line, Mazursky changed the line to "But you're a bitch." All subsequent prints after the initial theatrical release contain this line, and the original has since disappeared.

I don't quite get that because it's still listed as an 'R', probably due to Meyron's topless scene.

xpost

I like this idea, if only because the process of occasionally listing everything I've been saving to watch "for later" might actually goad me into watching some of these things. Anyway, the thread is yours to start.

man I can't imagine Tempest being approved at any other moment than in the post-Biskind arc of Hollywood.

RIP. Been watching his films lately, and had meant to post to this thread.

http://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2014/07/01/in-memoriam-paul-mazursky/

aw, sad. rip

Quite surprised he never got a director nomination--four for writing, one as a producer, nothing for direction. Bypassed for An Unmarried Woman in favor of some very dubious picks in '78.

Nu-critic types don't really have much use for him. He outlived his fashionable period by about 35 years.

Alfred's ranking in first post pretty close to mine, tho I'd sneak Unmarried Woman ahead of Down & Out at least. Moon Over Parador was a half-cute comedy too.

I'd put AUW high too.

Coincidentally I watched this clip last weekend in a hotel room:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuqjFGJuErA

Nu-critic types don't really have much use for him. He outlived his fashionable period by about 35 years.

yeah, he's kind of stuck with bob rafelson in the half-forgotten '70s auteurs bin

like arthur penn (who was even older), because of his late success, he was often lumped in with "new hollywood" but is of an entirely different generation

i meant to say, like rafelson and arthur penn

My quick obit. Everything Pauline Kael claimed about him was true, which is rare.

c'mon, Rafelson made about 3 good or better films, and I'm counting Head.

I'm one of nine living people who saw Willie and Phil first-run in a theatre.

c'mon, Rafelson made about 3 good or better films, and I'm counting Head.

― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, July 1, 2014 7:12 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

huh? i'm not criticizing rafelson, i'm just saying he seems to be ignored in much the way mazursky has/had been. i love "head."

oh, i see, you're denigrating rafelson. honestly, i don't have enough stock in either of them to argue about it. i like "head" and the nutty one w/ schwarzenegger and "black widow" i guess.

yeah, Five Easy Pieces is just too mersh :/

rafelson gets a lot more play than mazursky (or penn) in biskind's easy riders etc, so i don't think he's been 'ignored' in quite the same way, if at all

and stuff like this set have kept some of rafelson's best movies well preserved and presented:

http://www.criterion.com/boxsets/769-america-lost-and-found-the-bbs-story

yeah, Five Easy Pieces is just too mersh :/

― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, July 2, 2014 1:42 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i guess i just find too much of that film's ethos repulsive. the karen black character is such a cruel caricature. and the scene parodying "intellectual chat" is likewise cruel, strident, and unfunny.. the whole film's a mixed bag of fairly fresh, resonant stuff and dated awfulness.

I need to finally watch W&P.

When it opened I hadn't seen Jules & Jim, so I said well no dice. Now I cringe at the concept of Margot Kidder in place of Jeanne Moreau.

To me the criticism of An Unmarried Woman by Goldie Hawn's Private Benjamin still holds water: "I would've been Mrs Alan Bates so fast!"

roundup

http://www.fandor.com/keyframe/daily-paul-mazursky-1930-2014

Scott Founas' obit: http://variety.com/2014/film/columns/varietys-scott-foundas-remembers-paul-mazursky-a-poetic-farceur-of-american-lives-1201256744/

The Film Experience crew is not happy with Enemies, A Love Story: they don't like Ron Silver in the role and think Mazursky doesn't handle the tonal shifts.

http://thefilmexperience.net/blog/2014/8/31/smackdown-1989-anjelica-brenda-dianne-lena-and-julia-roberts.html#comments

Screened Alice B. Toklas tonight. Kind of good and also not good. Obviously a dry run for B&C&T&A. Sellers is very interesting, Walken-esque in the 'straight' scenes. A pre-Altman David Arkin! Loads of great shots of 1968 LA. Would like to go back in time and have lots of...brownies...w/Leigh Taylor-Young.

Although I've seen it before, I realised I don't really understand the ending where (SPOILER) he walks out of his wedding again. Is his dropping out as a hippie meant to have been a dream?

I think so, which would explain how he goes full-longhair in the space of like 30 days.

Thanks. I've still got that vhs tape I think - so may give it another run.

http://www.grolschfilmworks.com/media/uploads/images/i%20love%20you%20alice%20b.jpg

seems Tarantino is a fan

http://thedissolve.com/news/3413-tarantino-new-beverly-programming/

As I was always led to believe. Alex in Wonderland is a not particularly good riff on 8-1/2, but Donald Sutherland is nice (it seems to have been shot before M*A*S*H was released), and he has a lovely fantasy sequence with Jeanne Moreau. Mazursky pretty funny as a hotshot producer with a Chagall on his wall and a caged monkey in his dining alcove.

Fun Fact: Both AIW and Brewster McCloud were released by Jim Aubrey's MGM at roughly the same time. The studio had such faith in the films that they were frequently and mistakenly mixed up when it came press screenings and even some public engagements.

I had it in my mind that Kael wrote a long, rapturous review of Blume in Love, but in fact she didn't even review it on release--some scattered mentions in Reeling, and a later capsule review in 5001 Nights. Another litmus test for your tolerance of early-'70s New American Cinema, like Save the Tiger, Scarecrow, and others. I enjoyed Segal (the beard is ridiculous, though), winced a number of times, and found Susan Anspach as puzzling as ever.

Hard to find much online about Blume in Love. Vincent Canby's review is available, noteworthy for what it doesn't even mention (if you've seen the film, you should know what I mean).

https://www.nytimes.com/1973/06/18/archives/film-paul-mazurskys-blume-in-lovethe-cast.html

IMDB has some links to vintage reviews; I read Ebert's (four stars!) and Molly Haskell's (a combo w/A Touch of Class), and neither of them mention it either... although the latter mentions what happens after that.

Ebert: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/blume-in-love-1973

Haskell:
https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=XslHAAAAIBAJ&sjid=8IsDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6327%2C741447

^^That one is from a scan of the original issue.

I'm usually against holding stuff written 40 years ago to the prevailing climate of today (within reason, that is), but from the Ebert review, "The itinerant musician is played by Kris Kristofferson, who gives evidence once again that he has a real acting talent--particularly in the scene where he hits Segal and then bursts into tears," it's somewhat amazing he doesn't feel it worth mentioning why Kristofferson hits him. (Is it possible the publication wouldn't allow specific mention of why? Find that hard to believe.)

Re-watching Eyes Wide Shut tonight; forgot that Blume in Love can be glimpsed on Nicole Kidman's kitchen TV. I'm sure someone has written a dissertation on the how the two films connect.

I've been waiting two or three years for An Unmarried Woman to shop up on the Criterion Channel, so I could bypass the expensive DVD. If it did, I missed it, but I found a weird site with a free stream that I watched last night:

https://m.ok.ru/video/2464094685894

Taken from the Criterion disc, so great quality.

I don't think that's the first time I've seen it since it came out, but definitely the first time this century. Not sure how I feel about it...It was released at exactly the moment when I was becoming immersed in films as a teenager, so it had a big impact on me at the time. One reason I love going back to such films is to (maybe, hopefully) get a sense of myself back then. Came up empty last night; I think the 1978 me is gone for good.

I'm guessing the politics of the film would be viewed as fine in broad outline--well-meaning, pushing against conventional Hollywood--but open to lots of specific criticsms today. Top of the list, maybe: the question of whether the film suggests, implicitly, that Erika still needs a man to complete her life. I don't know that it does--she doesn't give in to Saul at the end--and don't think that whatever's good about it hinges on that question anyway. You totally share Erika's hatred of her husband, so that holds up fine.

Best performance--most unusual, anyway--is Lisa Lucas as the daughter. Not a cliched movie teenager at all. Was reading up her--she went on to become a reporter for the NY Daily News. She has the funniest, most '70s line in the film, I think, after she and her boyfriend see the new Lina Wertmüller film (Seven Beauties, presumably): "I loved it--Phil thought it was flawed." She's John Simon as a 15-year-old.

Love the scene where she and Clayburgh sing "Maybe I'm Amazed." Elsewhere, Pablo Cruise and Leo Sayer--the roots of yacht, as my friend just said. (Except isn't that the thing itself?) Saw Vincent Schiavelli's name deep in the credits as a party guest but missed him.

I think the film's mess -- I'm not sure Mazursky himself has firm convictions about Erika -- fits its open-endedness. In a way Mazursky's stubbornness in not letting Erika settle down with Alan Bates, the World's Sexiest Painter, is to his credit. His contemporaries didn't write or accept these kinds of scripts.

I wrote a couple weeks ago that Mazursky’s script requires her to dawdle when self-actualization for a character like hers begins with new marriage and ends with recommending The Power of Now to her grown daughter in 15 years.

I've been waiting two or three years for An Unmarried Woman to shop up on the Criterion Channel

I've been wanting to see it for like 20 years, but it was never even available on Netflix DVD, much less current streaming services. At the same time, not sure I want to take my chances on "weird" Russian sites.

I didn't have any problems at all...I don't think! Who knows what's going on out of view; maybe I'm a porn star in Russia today.

I saw it most recently on Amazon Prime during lockdown.

I rented it from Netflix disc service in like, '13-'14 (definitely before he died). It always had a wait time tho. The Fox DVD went OOP around then.

Hmmm, maybe I'm misremembering.

I'm sure many articles have been written about this, but Hollywood really groomed her to be a big star for a time, and it just didn't take. After An Unmarried Woman (using this site: https://www.the-numbers.com/)...

1979 - Starting Over (also a controversial art film, Luna)
1980 - It's My Turn, #10 on box-office list
1981 - First Monday in October, #18 on box-office list
1982 - I'm Dancing as Fast as I Can, #81 on box-office list
1983 - Hanna K., another name non-English director (Costa-Gavras), out of the top 100 box-office list

And that's it--she works steadily after that, but I can't see a single high-profile film for the rest of her life (except for ceremonial roles near the end). The big female stars in the early '80s were Goldie Hawn, Sally Field, Fonda still, with Streep and Sigourney Weaver and Debra Winger and others ascending. I don't know why that was--she and Michael Douglas got the cover of Rolling Stone for It's My Turn. Seems like she maybe got punatively cast aside for I'm Dancing as Fast as I Can flopping.

"Her" meaning Jill Clayburgh, obviously.

Look at this IMDB trivia:

Was among the first generation of 70's actresses--including Jane Fonda, Ellen Burstyn, Diane Keaton, Carrie Snodgress and Marsha Mason--known for portraying characters sprung from the New Age feminism era: smart, independent, capable, but often times neurotic. Her film decline coincided with the conservative Reagan administration and a loss of interest in the feminist movement.

Another item mentions she had a baby in 1983, and another that she was diagnosed with Leukemia in '89 (which eventually killed her in 2010).

Interesting...American film definitely took a conservative (or at least commercial) turn in the early '80s, and most of those actresses did tail off. Clayburgh's decline seemed to be the most precipitous, almost an on/off switch.

This was over at wiki:

In the controversial Hanna K. (1983), she was a court-appointed Israeli-American lawyer assigned to defend a Palestinian man for director Costa-Gavras. The film was a box office failure and hurt her career. Upset by the film's reception, Clayburgh gave up cinema for three years, during which time she was busy bringing up her children.

Her daughter, Lily Rabe, was done a number of prestige cable and streaming series.

I've been waiting two or three years for An Unmarried Woman to shop up on the Criterion Channel

I've been wanting to see it for like 20 years, but it was never even available on Netflix DVD, much less current streaming services. At the same time, not sure I want to take my chances on "weird" Russian sites.

― jaymc, Thursday, April 17, 2025 8:41 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I didn't have any problems at all...I don't think! Who knows what's going on out of view; maybe I'm a porn star in Russia today.

― clemenza, Thursday, April 17, 2025 8:42 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

ok.ru really isn't that "weird", it's illegal of course but within that context it's as mundane as, like, the pirate bay or pornhub. I've watched dozens of films on it, a lot of classic Hollywood aficionados use it for stuff that isn't on youtube or archive

Clayburgh was the lead in Shy People (1987) but Barbara Hershey got the acclaim and awards.