I want to know what I'm running from when it's a dead end I'm running to

[sovay]

New England winter: streetlit snow drifting photogenically over glass-black ice. I have the heat cranked up in order to keep the temperature in the house a solid ten degrees below the setting. Hestia sunlamps beside my computer. We have now received condolence cards from all three veterinary practices in Autolycus' life.

I have never under any conditions of stress lost the ability to read for pleasure, but my ability to watch movies and TV has proven much more fragile. This month, almost nothing. Last night spatch and I cautiously tuned in to and were thoroughly delighted by Bullshot (1983), a brilliantly stupid spoof of H. C. McNeile's Bulldog Drummond translated from a popular and long-running fringe stage play with the three writer-stars intact and the rest of the cast filled in with priceless ringers, plus a theme song by parts of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. It is the kind of comedy which is satire and panto and Harold Lloyd and Aristophanes in a cocktail shaker which is also on fire and if a joke doesn't work it's already in the rear view mirror of half a dozen others. It sets up obvious groaners and then no one sees the toppers coming. Everything looks like a modestly cromulent heritage film and everyone is playing to the cheap seats and national stereotypes. Alan Shearman and Diz White are especially to be commended not just for their commitments of physical and vocal comedy—there are takes in this film that can't be believed even when seen—but for cartooning their archetypes so exactly that their performances are constantly blundering about in the uncanny valley between irony and sincerity, just as Hugh "Bullshot" Crummond can calculate a trajectory from the glint of a monocle while failing to notice his arch-enemy sneaking behind him at lunch and Rosemary Fenton has no fear of heights or tarantulas and her scones should have been internationally prohibited at the end of the last war. Highly recommended, cinematic dumbassery at its finest. The giant octopus? The Venus flytrap corsage? Thanks, HandMade Films.

Otherwise I tapped out after the first act of The Story of G.I. Joe (1945) even though it actually is as unusual an American WWII film as I have been reading for years and didn't get any farther with the intended compromise of The Rear Gunner (1943)—one of the training films made by Burgess Meredith while serving as a captain in the U.S. Army Air Forces, before he was released from active duty in order to be available for The Story of G.I. Joe—than realizing from the credits that it also contained Ronald Reagan. Life is too short for movies containing Ronald Reagan, even ones also containing Tom Neal and Dane Clark so early in his career he's still credited as Bernard Zanville.

Seriously, I loved David Canfield's "Cary Grant and Randolph Scott's Hollywood Story: 'Our Souls Did Touch'" both for its detailed research and its willingness to believe in relationships existing romantically between the preferred categories of officially platonic or equally sexual. Less seriously, the still of the two of them and Irene Dunne in My Favorite Wife (1940) looks like a meme in the making.

Comments

[gwynnega]

That David Canfield article is beautiful. I remember that My Favorite Wife was included in The Celluloid Closet, but I didn't know the whole story. It makes me love Cary Grant even more, which I didn't think was possible.

[batdina]

The note about Ronald Reagan had me and the p-c laughing out loud. Just thought you should know.

[sovay]

The note about Ronald Reagan had me and the p-c laughing out loud. Just thought you should know.

Thank you!

[sovay]

It makes me love Cary Grant even more, which I didn't think was possible.

I was glad they were as happy as they were, for as long as they were, however.

[troisoiseaux]

Less seriously, the still of the two of them and Irene Dunne in My Favorite Wife (1940) looks like a meme in the making.

It's a perfect candidate for "he only got two eyes"...?

(But, seriously, what an article!!!!)

[sovay]

It's a perfect candidate for "he only got two eyes"...?

I'd never seen that!

(But, seriously, what an article!!!!)

It was just quietly hanging out in the sidebar of something I've now forgotten reading! I'm so glad of it.

[kathmandu]

"venus flytrap corsage."

::boggles::

[sovay]

::boggles::

It's worn by the femme fatale. It's very impressive.

[aurumcalendula]

That's a lovely article!

[julian]

That's a good article by Canfield. (I hadn't seen the Modern Screen pictures before. Aw.)

[sovay]

That's a lovely article!

The focus through the fan magazines was wonderful: I'd seen photographs over the years, but I had never seen someone collate the contents of the articles they accompanied.

[sovay]

That's a good article by Canfield. (I hadn't seen the Modern Screen pictures before. Aw.)

I have seen a lot of pictures of Cary Grant and Randolph Scott (for years I knew Scott from pictures with Grant before I actually saw him in anything involving screen acting) and I'm not where they were all from, but the diving board photo is one of my favorites. There was a lot of information in that article I didn't know.

[moon_custafer]

Guess I’ll have to watch Bullshot at some point. *Checks which of the Bonzos was involved* Ah, “Legs” Larry Smith.

BTW have you ever listened to Viv Stanshall’s “Breath from the Pit?” Episode 3 here: https://youtu.be/F6nYWgedn_g?si=t9z6mDq6eJjVjIgX

[sovay]

Guess I’ll have to watch Bullshot at some point.

For bonus points, the supporting cast included a character actor I had just been talking about who mostly seems to turn up in small parts on TV.

(Christopher Good, easiest to point to as the casualty of the cold open of ITV's Casting the Runes (1979). I have also seen him in Danger UXB (1979) and he was on my mind from turning up in the 1973 broadcast of Richard Hughes' Danger (1973) I was listening to the other day. In Bullshot he plays essentially the Claude Allister role complete with monocle and obviously had a free pass to the Drones Club. He did play Gussie Fink-Nottle in the disastrous and disavowed first version of Alan Ayckbourn and Andrew Lloyd Webber's Jeeves in 1975, but I've mostly been able to find the truly adorable costume design sketches.)

*Checks which of the Bonzos was involved* Ah, “Legs” Larry Smith.

I believe he doubles as one of the servicemen whose reverent war stories of Bullshot are all horrifying fiascos.

BTW have you ever listened to Viv Stanshall’s “Breath from the Pit?”

No! Tell me about it?

[moon_custafer]

Somebody let Viv Stanshall and Keith Moon do a summer-replacement radio show, and in between playing 1930s records and exchanging banter, they did a serial about Colonel Knutt (and his sidekick Lemmy) battling the Colonel’s German-accented nemesis and his army of trained gorillas.

[sovay]

Somebody let Viv Stanshall and Keith Moon do a summer-replacement radio show, and in between playing 1930s records and exchanging banter, they did a serial about Colonel Knutt (and his sidekick Lemmy) battling the Colonel’s German-accented nemesis and his army of trained gorillas.

That sounds like something they'd do.

[julian]

I didn't know a lot of the stuff toward the end, particularly the Royce-Donaldson material. Which a) made me sad, but also b) reminded me a lot of Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickock, who *also* had a very deep and meaningful relationship, drifted apart due to Circumstances, and one of them (Hick) never really let go of the relationship. Lot of differences, too, of course. Just... echoes.

[sovay]

Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickock, who *also* had a very deep and meaningful relationship, drifted apart due to Circumstances, and one of them (Hick) never really let go of the relationship. Lot of differences, too, of course. Just... echoes.

I don't think I know anything about them, so I shall go and read. My echo was Canfield's quotation of Spoto's claim that Grant was told by his studio to choose his career or his lover: I was reminded of William Haines, who famously in that position chose his lover and lived by all accounts happily ever after. (I still need to track down his biography by William J. Mann.)

[skygiants]

I loved the article, too, and the space it makes for important relationships existing and being true and important in liminal spaces.

[sovay]

I loved the article, too, and the space it makes for important relationships existing and being true and important in liminal spaces.

I like that way of saying it a lot.