Plus it was fascinating to see glimpses of the life and times of 1960s New York, though both the healing angel and I could have stood to have those wordless scene shortened just a tad.
I was just reading a Criterion essay about Shelagh Delaney and Tony Richardson's A Taste of Honey (1961) which mentions something similar about the location shooting:
"Their script is faithful to the dialogue and plot of the play but explodes it out of the cramped settings of cheap apartments and into the rural and urban landscapes of industrial Lancashire. Free Cinema's cinematographer of choice, Walter Lassally, renders the canals and streets of Salford, one of Manchester's satellite towns, into an extraordinary composition of black-and-white photography. Some critics have dismissed these sequences as unmotivated by the plot, and it is true that they were quickly to become clichéd by the overuse of such shots in subsequent films. However, there is no doubt for this critic that Richardson succeeds in making the setting an integral part of the film . . . In particular, the decaying industrial landscape is an integral part of the love scenes between Jo and her sailor. Indeed, the most moving shot of the film, bringing setting, plot, and character together, has Jo watching her lover on the deck of his ship as he, unaware of her gaze, sails out from the narrow canal to the open sea."
I know the almost documentary sense-of-place wasn't unheard of in earlier movies, because it's always something I watch for (1950 Boston in Mystery Street—or 1953 Coney Island in Little Fugitive, which I never wrote about but which was amazing), but I have gotten the idea that it really took off in the '60's because of the New Wave. I like that sort of thing personally, even if it doesn't get the narrative anyway. It's part of what I think of as a film's prose style.
(I've read A Taste of Honey, but never seen either a stage or the screen version; I couldn't find a Region 1 DVD anywhere the last time I looked in 2009. I'm really glad there's a Criterion edition and plan to watch it as soon as I can get out from under some of this backlog of other, mostly noir movies I want to write about.)
I loved the skit that Nick and Murray start to perform featuring Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson
Yes! Nick is ahead of his time. "You can't do an impersonation of Alexander Hamilton! Nobody knows what he sounds like!"–"That's the funny part."
the Chuckles-the-Chipmunk guy (which... rabbit ears? Really? Had the producers never seen a chipmunk, or was that to reinforce how bad the show was?)
I took it as a sign about the show. And, yes, I really like that when Leo "Chuckles" Herman finally shows up in person, he is exactly as exhaustingly difficult as we've been braced to believe, and also a person.
You can live in the conventional world and still collect eagles, yo!
I agree. The ending overstates its case unless you take it as Murray's subjective view of the effects of his choice, in which case I still think he's wrong! But it interests me that even if he considers it total creative death to return to a nine-to-five job for Chuckles the Chipmunk, he still does it for Nick's sake.
I was thinking of the movie Billy Elliot, about the boy from a mining town who wants to be a ballet dancer.
Talk to me about Billy Elliot? I know my mother loved it, but I've never seen it. I take it there is not the same support structure available to the kid.
how sometimes guns on the wall really are just scene-setting decoration, leading the healing angel to remark that the concept of Chekhov's gun was really an exercise in confirmation bias (i.e., you notice them when they go off, and so you say, ah yes: a Chekhov's gun, but you don't notice when they don't. Usually, anyway.)
What was the healing angel expecting to happen with the restaurant?
no subject
I was just reading a Criterion essay about Shelagh Delaney and Tony Richardson's A Taste of Honey (1961) which mentions something similar about the location shooting:
"Their script is faithful to the dialogue and plot of the play but explodes it out of the cramped settings of cheap apartments and into the rural and urban landscapes of industrial Lancashire. Free Cinema's cinematographer of choice, Walter Lassally, renders the canals and streets of Salford, one of Manchester's satellite towns, into an extraordinary composition of black-and-white photography. Some critics have dismissed these sequences as unmotivated by the plot, and it is true that they were quickly to become clichéd by the overuse of such shots in subsequent films. However, there is no doubt for this critic that Richardson succeeds in making the setting an integral part of the film . . . In particular, the decaying industrial landscape is an integral part of the love scenes between Jo and her sailor. Indeed, the most moving shot of the film, bringing setting, plot, and character together, has Jo watching her lover on the deck of his ship as he, unaware of her gaze, sails out from the narrow canal to the open sea."
I know the almost documentary sense-of-place wasn't unheard of in earlier movies, because it's always something I watch for (1950 Boston in Mystery Street—or 1953 Coney Island in Little Fugitive, which I never wrote about but which was amazing), but I have gotten the idea that it really took off in the '60's because of the New Wave. I like that sort of thing personally, even if it doesn't get the narrative anyway. It's part of what I think of as a film's prose style.
(I've read A Taste of Honey, but never seen either a stage or the screen version; I couldn't find a Region 1 DVD anywhere the last time I looked in 2009. I'm really glad there's a Criterion edition and plan to watch it as soon as I can get out from under some of this backlog of other, mostly noir movies I want to write about.)
I loved the skit that Nick and Murray start to perform featuring Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson
Yes! Nick is ahead of his time. "You can't do an impersonation of Alexander Hamilton! Nobody knows what he sounds like!"–"That's the funny part."
the Chuckles-the-Chipmunk guy (which... rabbit ears? Really? Had the producers never seen a chipmunk, or was that to reinforce how bad the show was?)
I took it as a sign about the show. And, yes, I really like that when Leo "Chuckles" Herman finally shows up in person, he is exactly as exhaustingly difficult as we've been braced to believe, and also a person.
You can live in the conventional world and still collect eagles, yo!
I agree. The ending overstates its case unless you take it as Murray's subjective view of the effects of his choice, in which case I still think he's wrong! But it interests me that even if he considers it total creative death to return to a nine-to-five job for Chuckles the Chipmunk, he still does it for Nick's sake.
I was thinking of the movie Billy Elliot, about the boy from a mining town who wants to be a ballet dancer.
Talk to me about Billy Elliot? I know my mother loved it, but I've never seen it. I take it there is not the same support structure available to the kid.
how sometimes guns on the wall really are just scene-setting decoration, leading the healing angel to remark that the concept of Chekhov's gun was really an exercise in confirmation bias (i.e., you notice them when they go off, and so you say, ah yes: a Chekhov's gun, but you don't notice when they don't. Usually, anyway.)
What was the healing angel expecting to happen with the restaurant?
I'm so glad you liked it!