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« THURSDAY MARGINALIA | Main | L.A. EVENT: SPOKEN WORD AT BROADLINE CAFE »

August 02, 2007

L.A. EVENT: KURT VONNEGUT DOUBLE FEATURE

Wednesday, August 8 at 8 p.m. at the Egyptian Theatre, 6712 Hollywood Boulevard, courtesy of American Cinematheque.  Details herewith:

SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE 1972, Universal, 104 min. Director George Roy Hill and screenwriter Stephen Geller (TV’s “ Mission : Impossible”) adapt Kurt Vonnegut’s sardonic exploration of the timeless madness of human existence, from wartime atrocity to middle-class mediocrity to interplanetary euphoria. Middle-aged optometrist, Billy Pilgrim (Michael Sacks), who survived the hellish WWII firebombing of Dresden, simultaneously exists in the past as a young POW in a German prison camp and in the far future as an elderly resident in a zoo on the planet Tralfamadore (where he is memorably pampered by Valerie Perrine as the libidinous starlet, Montana Wildhack). With Rob Leibman, Sharon Gans, Holly Near, Perry King and Eugene Roche. “Mr. Hill's achievement in SLAUGHTERHOUSE -FIVE is in transferring to film…the author's ebullient senses of humor and chaos…Second to THE GODFATHER, SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE is probably the most perfectly cast film in months, mostly with actors who have had little previous film experience…” – Vincent Canby, The New York Times

Rare! HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WANDA JUNE 1971, Sony Repertory, 105 min. Director Mark Robson adapts Kurt Vonnegut’s satiric play puncturing arrogant Anglo Saxon machismo. After being lost for eight years in the Amazonian rain forest and given up for dead, big white hunter Rod Steiger returns home with his sidekick (and dropper of the Nagasaki A-bomb), William Hickey (PRIZZI’S HONOR). But macho blowhard Steiger is in for a surprise when he finds that his former-carhop wife (Susannah York) is now highly educated and enamored of a gentle, pacifist doctor (George Grizzard). Don Murray (BUS STOP) is yet another new fixture on the scene, an over-eager vacuum cleaner salesman hoping to charm his way into York ’s heart. Pamelyn Ferdin is the couple’s deceased progeny, Wanda June, playing shuffleboard with Jesus in heaven. Vonnegut’s priceless verbal sparring ensues, with often hilariously barbed results. “Rod Steiger shines as the self-deceiving ultra-masculine hero, returned from eight years in the Amazon jungle, to find that not only has his loving wife, a former pinheaded carhop (played brilliantly by Susannah York), become a levelheaded intellectual equal but has gone to his extreme opposite in seeking another soul mate.” – Variety NOT ON DVD

Posted by TEV at 12:15 AM in Events |

Comments

Happy Birthday, Wanda June! Am I the only one who's seen it (or the even rarer, "Between Time and Timbuktu," featuring Bob and Ray)?

Two scenes stick in my ossified memory bank...First: Rod Steiger offers his homerically-named wife Penelope a backrub after returning (horny) from his long odyssey in the wilderness...she is understandably wary; he says, "Don't worry, I'm not going to introduce you to some jungle novelty...." (or words to that effect; I found this hysterically funny as an adolescent).

(Spoiler warning...)

Second: Rod Steiger smashes his wife's boyfriend's priceless violin. To which Steiger's sidekick (the wonderful Hickey) says: "By not smashing that violin, you could have been its creator..."(or words to that effect). I still think that last line is just about the most profound bit of movie dialogue I've ever heard.

Those were the days...

(via the miraculous internet, I've just turned up the script: http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/Happy_Birthday_Wanda_JUne.html)

Posted by: Steven Augustine | August 03, 2007 at 04:41 PM

Dear friend,

Just FYI: Stephen Geller was never involved in the "Mission: Impossible" TV series. That was BRUCE Geller, who died in a plane crash in the late 1970s. Steve Geller, who adapted Slaughterhouse-Five is a novelist, playwright, and screenwriter who teaches at Savannah College of Art and Design (and previously at Boston University, where he founded the screenwriting program).

You can read more about him here:

http://www.imaginenews.com/Archive/2004/OCT_2004/01_FEATURES/08_GELLER.html

And here:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0312409/

I hope this helps.

Posted by: Eric Harper | April 03, 2008 at 03:39 AM

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