frank perry, film director

Not a director so much as a compiler of awesome moments, like Mommie Dearest.

p strong filmography imo, have seen all but 'hello again'

1). last summer
2). mad housewife/rancho
3). trilogy
4). man on a swing
5). the swimmer

Katy Perry is his estranged niece.

take the camp out of mommie dearest and no 1 would remember it at all

great niece i think

The Swimmer only makes sense if you've read the (magnificent) short story.

I saw Hello Again at the theater! Mommie Dearest, too.

'on the bridge' was v compelling, i thought; he films his travails thru being diagnosed w/ prostate cancer

'trilogy' was to show @ cannes in '68

they also did a book w/ it as like a companion piece abt how they adapted the stories, etc - him, eleanor & capote

the 'a christmas memory' section is really beautiful. my mother remembers it from tv and had been talking abt it for years until i tracked down a copy

David and Lisa.

David.

yes Lisa

The Swimmer's over-egged melodrama makes total sense without having read Cheever. it works perfectly well as a Burt Lancaster porno for a start.

That's a Prince joke, Alfred?

well that part's true

xpost

Now I'm wanting someone to rewrite "Computer Blue" with this Lisa's rhyming speech pattern.

won't have time to rewatch any of these, tempted to go Rancho Deluxw bcz max left it off the Jeff Bridges poll

not undeserving! it's funny, f/ slim pickens, jimmy buffett doing c&w, what more could u want

funny that this polish poster for 'diary of a mad housewife' would work just as good for 'mommie'

http://www.posteritati.com/jpg/D3/DIARY%20OF%20MAD%20HOUSE%20POL.JPG

Havent seen anything by him. Always meant to see Mommie Dearest at least.

Also, never knew there was even a film of Didion's Play It As It Lays til just now.

the only thing i know about it is the hilariously bitchy kael review

take the camp out of mommie dearest and no 1 would remember it at all

Wrong. Shockingly wrong.

Not a director so much as a compiler of awesome moments, like Mommie Dearest.

Or, more precisely, the awesome moments in Mommie Dearest clash with the pained, earnest ones ruining any sense of gestalt and thus becoming a masterpiece that fucks with traditional conceptions of what a masterpiece could be. Ya know, like Side One of Roxy Music's debut.

Closer to a trad masterpiece = On The Bridge

i just flat think thats a crazy opinion of 'mommie dearest' but i knew it had its defenders

KJB otm, and I'm not interested in any disagreement.

Anyway, playing with fire to create this poll and hope no one votes for it.

hah & i knew from reading back posts that u were a big defender. s'ok, agree 2 disagree

w/e ppl can vote for it, i just hope theyve even seen some of his other stuff

theres nothing i can do abt ppl who want to vote the wrong film

I saw at least five of these 20+ years ago on TV, can't really judge.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f3/Compromising_Positions_poster.jpg

MYOB

Hated The Swimmer; thought Rancho Deluxe was an okay attempt at mid-'70s Altman. I've wanted to see Play It As It Lays for a long time. Anyway, its many flaws aside, any Neil Young fan's vote should be obvious.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

"I'm not interested in any disagreement."

I'm stealing this line from you, Eric. Thanx!

Mommie Dearest is a masterpiece and utterly, hilariously eclipses the rest of this drearily middlebrow filmography...and I'm not interested in any disagreement.

Feels so good.

hmph, so who was the 3rd vote?

care to link me to something praising 'mommie' to that degree?

you guys don't like 'last summer'?

he got a retro in NYC that concludes today. I caught Last Summer (16mm print from Australia -- only one that circulates) and Doc (so-so anti-western, good cast) over the weekend.

https://quadcinema.com/program/desperate-characters-the-cinema-of-frank-eleanor-perry/

I enjoyed Bilge Ebiri's Mommie-bashing here:

https://www.villagevoice.com/2017/06/01/the-cinema-of-frank-and-eleanor-perry-finally-gets-its-due/

Bashing is overstated. Ebiri isn't really much of a basher.

"Camp idiocies" doesn't qualify?

Last Summer print had a scene cut I remember from TV showings where the teens peep two gay men having sex on the beach (Fire Island) and Barbara Hershey tells the others who are poised to flee "I want to watch." Aussie censors!

Earlier she says "I don't get why people are so mean about fags... They're just doing their own thing, right?"

Anyway the movie is a little too pedantic (sledgehammer seagull symbolism) but hard to forget. It also serves the three beautiful teens vs the deeper, homely outsider, movie-style, until the climax. Good luck tracking it down.

Burns nearly walked away with the Stinkylulu supporting actress smackdown 1969 ... even I can't believe I just typed those words.

http://stinkylulu.blogspot.com/2008/12/supporting-actress-smackdown-1969.html

She has a long monologue mid-movie about her mother's drowning that must've clinched her nomination. It's good.

Warner Archive used to--might still--field questions about projects on their Facebook page. They have the rights to Last Summer, and it seemed like every month they got a query about their ongoing restoration efforts. IIRC, they were basically making a new master culled from different sources--The Aussie 16 mm print (which is indeed the most complete surviving celluloid copy), a tape master which has the cut footage, and various and sundry negative/positive elements--none of which were in the greatest of shape thank s to both the shoestring nature of the production and original distributor Allied Artists poorly maintained archives.

Still haven't seen DIARY.

And also about Blue Pages, Eleanor’s thinly fictionalized and howlingly savage 1979 novel about her years working with Frank.

huh never heard of this sounds interesting

^read this, really good; blends a few styles but also p unique & funny, reminded me @ times of capote & day of the locust

also franks wiki sez Author Justin Bozung is currently writing the official biography of Frank Perry titled Character is Story: The Life & Films of Frank Perry, which is due out in 2018.

maybe that will lead to more of his films actually being viewable?

I saw Diary of a Mad Housewife at the Film Forum last night -- scorching, brutal comedy of the bourgeois Manhattan set. Carrie Snodgress deserved her plaudits, but the Perrys were pretty radical re her lawyer husband played by Richard Benjamin, who is quickly established as one of the most unpleasant spouses in the history of cinema. In a sequence where he's bedridden with a virus, he screeches "TEEEEEEN" (Snodgress plays Tina) so often that it goes from being 'too much' to calculatingly provocative. (If he's that shitty in the Sue Kaufman novel, such thing are often watered down on the screen.)

Also, apparently I saw a 93-minute edit Frank made after the original 104-minute release? It's referred to as a "TV version" in some sources, but it's not a broadcast version; plenty of R-rated material.

Amazing history re Snodgress, this film and Neil Young.

1970 NYT interview with the Perrys, good stuff about them being fired from The Swimmer

http://www.moviecrazed.com/outpast/perrys.html

Good interview. I like this bit:

The dinner dishes have been cleared away by a motherly servant and now, at the end of a high-pressure day on an Upper West Side movie set, the Perrys – with the aid of candlelight and red wine – unwind in the comfort of their Central Park South apartment.

Whatever became of Catherine Burns from Last Summer? Here's the downbeat story:

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/catherine-burns-inside-50-year-disappearance-an-oscar-nominee-1275646

^^Just saw a Love, American-Style w/Catherine Burns and tracked down that story again. They neglected to mention that as her career wound down, she toughed it out through a bunch of one-shot TV guest appearances (like the LAS ep) up into the '80s.

Spent yesterday recording the commentary track for the upcoming BluRay release of 1970’s “Diary of a Mad Housewife” exploring the intricacies of Frank & Eleanor Perry’s masterful screenplay & direction. Thank God this film will finally be seen again. Carrie Snodgress is stunning pic.twitter.com/juBl5NIX3v

— Larry Karaszewski (@Karaszewski) August 1, 2020

Don't think I've ever seen a Perry film; sorry, but Mommie Dearest always looked gross to me. The VHS box of Compromising Positions used to fascinate me, though:

https://img.reelgood.com/content/movie/8d7a6d88-7ca7-470d-a4ff-122548c77f08/poster-780.jpg

bah

https://img.reelgood.com/content/movie/8d7a6d88-7ca7-470d-a4ff-122548c77f08/poster-780.jpg

What’s the deal with Janet Margolin?

Blu-Rays of Ladybug Ladybug and Diary of A Mad Housewife coming December 15th in the states courtesy of Kino Lorber Studio Classics.

Diary of A Mad Housewife gets a loaded UK release from Indicator, which will include a TV cut with exclusive scenes.

https://www.powerhousefilms.co.uk/collections/frontpage/products/diary-of-a-mad-housewife-le

Diary of A Mad Housewife was worth the wait a couple months ago. Wow, do Richard Benjamin and Frank Langella give two of the most unpleasant male lead performances I've ever seen.

Caught 'Doc' on Prime. Presenting Harris Yulin as a Nixon-esque Wyatt Earp in a Vietnam Western was kinda inspired?

Coincidental revive, I just watched The Swimmer for the first time last weekend. I ... liked it? It's pretty weird, and when I read about the production the odd tonal shifts and camera tricks made more sense because of having so many chefs in the kitchen. I much prefer what I take to be the Perrys' parts — the more realist, less middlebrow-arty approach rather than the over the top "surrealist" stuff (which isn't really very surreal but is distracting). I liked the dream-to-nightmare vibe of it. I liked Lancaster's performance, the way you can feel something off about him from the start and it just grows from there.

It did very much feel like a filmed New Yorker short story.

Diary of a Mad Housewife's on Prime. I suggest watching it for Carrie Snodgress's Oscar-nominated performance and for its attitudes towards women in her state.

Also watch it for a very early cameo by the Alice Cooper group, in full feathers-a-flyin' mode.

^^Seconded to both. I've got the Kino Blu of Diary. Screened last year, it's striking how modern it (mostly) feels, like an Girls-style HBO prestige show 50 years early. And holy fuck, that ending!

But do NOT watch it for Richard Benjamin's nagging insistence that he and Snodgress have a "roll in the hay."

I just saw The Swimmer earlier this year and I agree.. it's also probably Lancaster's best performance. It's an odd, dreamy film that's ultimately really bleak and sad, kind of a sunny poolside Death of a Salesman

4K resto of Play It As It Lays playing tonight at the American Cinematheque in LA (and apparently touring afterwards?), so maybe someday soon it will be officially available?

From the Warner Archive FB:

FROM THE AMERICAN CINEMATHEQUE:
LAST SUMMER + Q&A with actor Barbara Hershey. Moderated by Larry Karaszewski.
Sun. Mar 29, 2026 | 3:00pm
Aero Theatre
World Premiere of New Restoration of Theatrical Version
Details on WARNER ARCHIVE's upcoming Blu-ray release will be announced soon!

COMING TO BLU-RAY FROM THE WARNER ARCHIVE COLLECTION ON JUNE 30th!
NEW 2026 1080pHD MASTER FROM 4K SCANS OF THE ORIGINAL NEGATIVE AND PRESERVATION ELEMENTS

LAST SUMMER (1969)
MSRP: $24.98
BD-50
ASPECT RATIO: 16x9 1.85:1
AUDIO SPECS: DTS HD-MA 2.0 MONO
RUNNING TIME: 97 Minutes

Cast: Barbara Hershey. Bruce Davison, Richard Thomas, Catherine Burns

Directed by Frank Perry

SPECIAL FEATURES: New feature-length audio commentary by Golden Globe-winning screenwriter Larry Karaszewski and film historian/author Justin Bozung; 3/29/2026 post-screening Q&A at the American Cinematheque in Santa Monica with Larry Karaszewski, Barbara Hershey and Bruce Davison; 5/3/2026 post-screening Q&A at the Paris Theater in New York with Larry Karaszewski and Richard Thomas; ‘Trailers from Hell’ with commentary by Larry Karaszewski; Deleted Scene with Richard Thomas and Ralph Waite, Allied Artists Promotional Reel; Original Theatrical Trailer

Set during a languid season on Fire Island, Last Summer is a stark and unsettling coming of age drama that captures the disaffection and moral drift of the late 1960s with unflinching honesty. Directed by Frank Perry (Diary of a Mad Housewife) and adapted by Eleanor Perry from Evan Hunter’s provocative novel, the film follows four teenagers—played by Barbara Hershey, Richard Thomas, Bruce Davison, and Catherine Burns (in an unforgettable Oscar®-nominated performance)—whose summer of idle freedom and social detachment gradually gives way to tragedy. Shot in a naturalistic style, Last Summer eschews easy judgments, instead presenting a chilling examination of youthful entitlement and emotional void. Perry’s restrained direction and the cast’s fearless performances lend the film a haunting authenticity that resonates long after the final frame. Last Summer is one of the most powerfully daunting and uncompromising American films of its time. Long unavailable for viewing, Last Summer been meticulously restored on re-constructed especially for this Warner Archive Blu-ray presentation.

film historian/author Justin Bozung

this is the guy who was doing a bio of perry, wonder the status of that

Saw it many years ago, don't remember anything; I'd be open to giving it another look.