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Right up there with how many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll tootsie pop (between 144 and 1000 according to science, three per the wise ol' owl), the longest running, most divisive debate in the American culture is: Die Hard — Christmas movie or not?
Easy answer: Of course it's a Christmas movie! Debate solved, we return you to your regularly scheduled program.
Look, stripped of the filigree, Die Hard is just How The Grinch Stole Christmas, only instead of the Grinch returning all the presents to the Who's down in Whoville, John McClane throws Hans Gruber off the Nakatomi Tower. What could be more Christmas than that? Because, you know, where three are gathered together for the holidays, somebody's gonna wanna throw somebody else off a really tall building.
Although to tell you the truth, for all its violence, Die Hard is more joyful than most Christmas tales, and if there's a good argument against it being a Christmas movie, that's it.
Christmas, more than any other holiday, tends toward the melancholy and bittersweet. Every version of a Christmas Carol centers on that consummate bastard Scrooge, It's a Wonderful Life is about suicide and despair, Miracle on 34th Street puts Santa Claus on trial for lunacy, Charlie Brown is depressed, Rudolph is ostracized, and the Grinch is, well, the very definition of a grinch.
Even the pure comedies involve a lot of angst: will Barbara Stanwyck lose her job, will Buddy the Elf find his dad, will Ralphie Parker shoot his eye out?
But then what can you expect when the original Christmas story is about a virgin who gives birth in a barn? We're dealing with a lot of [stuff], man!
My point, though, is that uh is that ... is that actually I don't know what my point is. I climbed aboard this train of thought without a ticket and no clear destination in mind and now I'm parked on a siding with no idea where I am or how I got here. Well, it's not the first time and it surely won't be the last. (And don't call me Shirley!)
And now the dog is whining at me so I'll wrap this up by saying that wherever you are and whatever you're doing, I hope you're safe and warm and with the people you love. And now I've got to take the dog out or I'm going to have a bigger problem than Christmas on my hands.
A merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.
(Fun fact: Reginald VelJohnson who played John McClane's cop buddy Sgt. Al Powell in Die Hard plays the Ghost of Christmas Future in my favorite Hallmark Christmas movie, the completely bonkers Ghosts of Christmas Always, about three ghosts who successfully scrooge some poor schmuck only to discover they scrooged the wrong guy. If you haven't seen it, check it out.)
If you're reading this blog, I assume you know the sophisticated comedy classic, The Philadelphia Story. Designed as a comeback vehicle for Katharine Hepburn, the movie won two Oscars (Jimmy Stewart as best actor, and best screenplay) and features what many consider the best performance of Cary Grant's illustrious career.
But if Hepburn had had her way, the movie would have starred not Grant and Stewart but Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy. That's right—Hepburn, who owned the film rights, wanted Gable and Tracy, and if they hadn't been tied up with other projects, that's who the studio would have cast.
And in the context of the times, you can see where she was coming from. Gable was the most popular actor in Hollywood, fresh off the smashing success of Gone With The Wind. And he'd made a career of taking the mickey out of upper class actresses—his Oscar-winning turn across from Claudette Colbert in It Happened One Night, in the aforementioned Gone With The Wind with Vivien Leigh, and many others.
As for Tracy, he'd won two Oscars, and Hepburn's instincts that she and he would be good together was right on the money—they eventually made nine movies together, including such comedy classics as Woman of the Year, Adam's Rib and Pat and Mike.
Not to mention Grant and Stewart weren't necessarily sure things in early 1940. We look back on Hepburn's three previous films with Grant as being treasures, particularly Bringing Up Baby and Holiday, but the fact is, all their previous pairings had been flops at the box office—indeed, the colossal failure of the former is why Hepburn needed a comeback vehicle in the first place.
And while Stewart had earned an Oscar-nomination the previous year with Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, nobody was ready yet to put him on the Mt. Rushmore of acting.
But sometimes, not getting what you want is the best thing that can happen to you. While I'm certain The Philadelphia Story would have been a hit with Gable and Tracy, it would have lacked Grant's champagne fizz and Stewart's fevered act-three naivete. You don't tug on Superman's cape, you don't spit into the wind, and you don't mess with a movie that film guru Leslie Halliwell called "Hollywood's most wise and sparkling comedy."
Bonus Trivia: On Broadway, Joseph Cotten and Van Heflin played the Grant and Stewart roles, respectively.
Katie-Bar-The-Door and I arrived shortly before dawn, creeping in through a side door to make as discreet an entrance as possible.
This was our second Willow Manor Ball so we had a better idea what to expect—dinner, dancing, free booze and movie stars out the yin-yang, all of it served up in the tastiest venue there is, the cerebral cortex of each individual attendee's brain. Which pretty much means anything goes and last year pretty much anything did.
Twelve months ago we made the mistake of inviting the cast of The Thing From Another World to tag along with us, and they had been an enthusiastic bunch, I'll give them that, but when I say they set the dance floor alight, I mean that quite literally. Only a hostess as gracious as Tess Kincaid wouldn't have sued our socks off. And I like my socks; I like wearing them. I wasn't inclined to test her patience again so soon.
We had been there maybe ten seconds when a burly waiter with a police revolver tucked under his arm approached us balancing a tray in his ham-sized fist. "Have a cocktail," he growled.
"Oh, no, thanks."
"I said have a cocktail!"
"I guess he wants us to have a cocktail," said Katie.
The drinks helped us blend in with the crowd, a mix of tuxedos, cocktail dresses, Halloween costumes and flights of fancy I don't have the space to describe, but sometimes you're in the mood for champagne and sometimes you want sterner stuff. This was an occasion for the latter.
We made our way to the bar.
"The important thing is the rhythm," a tall, thin man was explaining to the bartender. "Always have rhythm in your shaking. Now a Manhattan you shake to fox-trot time, a Bronx to two-step time, but a dry martini," he said, "you always shake to waltz time." He stopped and looked at me, an impish grin playing under his pencil-thin moustache. "How about you, friend. Dry martini?"
"I was hoping for a gin rickey," I admitted.
"A gin rickey," he said, quickly filling a highball glass with ice, gin, club soda and fresh-squeezed lime juice, "you shake to Jay-Z's '99 Problems'—the bootleg Grey Album mix, of course."
"That's pretty specific," I said, as a dog ran up and punched me in the belly with his paws.
"I've had eighty years to experiment," the thin man said. He introduced himself: "Nick Charles." His words were slurred but silky, as light and lilting on his lips as Fred Astaire was on a dance floor. Still, there was a worldly-wise toughness underneath his drunken elegance, and you would never mistake him for a gigolo or a pool parlor dude.
"Fictional characters," said a voice down the bar, "never worry about their fictional livers." I looked over Nick's right shoulder to see a lanky brunette with a wicked jaw curled seductively around an empty glass. "Bartender, bring me five more martinis," she was saying. "Line them up right here."
"My dog," said Nick, pointing at the beast peeing on my rented shoes. "Oh, and my wife."
"You might have mentioned me first on the billing," said Mrs. Charles.
"Nora, I'd like you to meet Katie-Bar-The-Door and the Mythical Monkey."
She nodded politely. "Katie, Myth, I don't usually look like this—I've been Christmas shopping. You know in 1934 we did our shopping on Christmas Eve? Now we do it before Halloween—fortunately, though, all online. Which explains the sweat pants and fur coat. Never left the sofa."
"Aren't you hot in that thing?" Katie asked, fingering Nora's floor-length sable.
"Stifling," Nora said. "But I figure if you're going to slaughter a room full of animals and sew their pelts into a garment, you might as well get some use out of it. Next year, I'm wearing Dalmatian."
"Come on," said Nick, "let's get something to eat—I'm thirsty. Katie, Monkey, won't you join us?"
"Yes, please do," Nora said. She was courteous and friendly to a fault, the sort of woman who would make a hobo feel welcome at the funeral of her mother. Which was good because we were joined at a large corner table by a motley collection of gangsters and roughnecks whom Nick introduced as Spider, Fingers, Clinker, Morelli, Dancer, Nunheim, Aunt Katherine, Julia Wolf, Rainbow Benny and Uncredited Hatcheck Girl.
"Oh, Nicky, you know such wonderful people," Nora said, and managed to sound like she meant it.
The caterer wasn't nearly so nice. "Waiter, would you please serve the nuts," she shouted at a plump-bellied man in a white dinner jacket and then she glared at us and snapped, "Yes, I said it—nuts! You're all nuts! Crazy as the proverbial loons! But all the same, would you care for some almonds and cashews?"
We declined and instead whistled up a variety of seafood, including shad roe, cracked crab and broiled lobster, that somehow arrived at the table as fourteen identical orders of sea bass. While as a general rule one should never order fish on Sunday, this being a fictional universe, it was actually quite good, a filet without bones, almost, cooked in butter as yellow as the sun.
We ate and while we waited for dessert, Nick raised his glass and said, "Now, my friends, I suppose you're wondering why I invited you to this swank little soiree—just this: I know who killed Robert Landis."
A groan went around the table and even the dog Asta opened one eye and yawned. "Good grief," said Clinker. "Not this again!"
The Hatcheck Girl agreed. "Bor-ing!"
"Bloody hell," muttered Morelli, "he's going to catch another killer. Every time I get invited to one of these darn dinners," he told Katie, "Nick here feels like he has to solve a murder. Even when I snuck into The Thin Man Goes Home as a completely different character, he solved another murder!"
"Yes, I agree with the riffraff," Aunt Katherine intoned haughtily. "Had I known you'd indulge in such tomfoolery, Nicolas, I'd have stayed home," and then under her breath added, "you alcoholic windbag!" At that Nora protested, and Nick whined, "I really do know who killed Robert," but the Nob Hill dowager would have none of it. "The floor show is quite sufficient without your added twaddle and flimflam. Besides, I'm missing a rerun of The Mentalist, dammit!"
Just then Jimmy Stewart popped out of the crowd, waving a pistol and foaming at the mouth. "Sure, I killed Robert! I've hated him for years! And Pedro and Selma, too! But more than anything," he said, "I hate sea bass! Sea bass?!? Who serves sea bass on a Sunday!?!"
"Put down that gun!"
"Get out of the way!"
Stewart waved us all back. "I've got six bullets!" he shouted. "One for the chef and one for myself! That's right, one for myself. And the rest for anyone who tries to stop me!"
"I'm not going to stop him," said Nunheim. "Are you going to stop him?"
"Not me," said Spider. "I don't like sea bass either."
A quick survey of the table revealed the group evenly split in our appraisal of sea bass, but unanimous in our distaste for bullets, and nearly so in our agreement that nobody was going to stop a heavily-armed Jimmy Stewart from shooting the chef if he really wanted to.
Only Katie-Bar-The-Door demurred and suddenly she flung aside her chair and laid out the would-be culinary assassin with a single blow of her tiny fist! Even as Jimmy Stewart fell back onto the dance floor, Katie tore the gun from his grasp and hurled it into the punch bowl, then pinned his ears back with a wrestling hold I had taught her on our wedding night.
The Oscar-winning actor was sobbing like a little girl when the police led him away.
"Why Katie!" I said. "You're a hero! You jumped right into the muzzle of that gun!"
"Hero is a sandwich," she shrugged. "I just didn't want to get kicked out of the Willow Manor Ball again. Although to tell you the truth," she said, "there is one thing I'd rather be doing—" And she gave me a come-hither look from under her eyelashes.
"Watching that rerun of The Mentalist?" I guessed.
"How did you know?" she laughed. "And afterwards," she said, waggling her eyebrows suggestively, "I'll demonstrate that wrestling hold for you."
She didn't have to ask me twice. "Let's go!"
In case you haven't noticed, I'm mostly marking time in the month of September. Here was a 20-question quiz that showed up a while back at Cinemaniac Reviews.
You get the first ten questions today, the next ten tomorrow. If you answer them on your blog, leave a link in the comment section. Or just answer them in the comment section.
I live for this kind of stuff.
1. What’s your favorite movie?
Ostensibly, Casablanca, but in the past few years, Katie-Bar-The-Door and I are much more likely to watch The Thin Man, The Thing From Another World and Rio Bravo.
2. Least favorite movie?
Endless Love, starring a young Brooks Shields. Worst. Movie. Ever. Or at least the worst I ever paid to see. I don't blame her though—I blame Franco Zeffirelli who despite helming this fiasco is somehow still allowed to direct.
3. Name one movie you loved upon initial viewing but eventually grew to hate (or vice-versa).
From love to hate? The Big Chill. On repeat viewings, I realized I loved the soundtrack, hated the story and characters.
From hate to love? Apocalypse Now. When I first saw it, I thought it a sprawling, self-indulgent mess with no ending. Maybe because I read and fell in love with the source novel, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (or maybe because I got smarter or maybe because I grew out of my teens), I came to love it (love it, I tells ya) as a commentary on just how thin the veneer of civilization really is.
4. Name your biggest “guilty pleasure” film.
I guess some would feel guilty about loving Used Cars, but I never feel guilty about my film pleasure. Why should I?
5. Favorite quote from a favorite actor/actress (must be a line from a movie)?
I could literally, I think, spend an entire day relying on nothing but movie quotes to communicate meaningfully with my fellow human beings, but back in the day I always got the biggest laugh for my imitation of an S.Z. Sakall line in Casablanca—falling spectacles included—"Honest?! As honest as the day is long!" (Pardon the colorization.)
This, by the way, is the line Katie-Bar-The-Door mentioned at dinner:
6. Favorite quote from a favorite actor/actress (must NOT be a line from a movie)?
"Everyone wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant."—by who else, Cary Grant
7. Three favorite movie scenes?
What, just three?
Off the top of my head:
The airport sequence at the end of Casablanca
The end of City Lights
The conclusion of the filibuster scene at the end of Mr. Smith Goes To Washington
But ask me tomorrow and I'll tell you something different.
8. Four films that should NOT have won Best Picture?
What, just four?
Here are four of the earliest that I wouldn't have even nominated for best picture, in chronological order:
a. The Broadway Melody (1928-29), which won over The Passion of Joan of Arc, The Wind and Steamboat Bill Jr..
b. Cimarron (1930-31), which won over City Lights, Dracula and The Public Enemy.
c. Cavalcade (1932-33), which won over Duck Soup, King Kong, Trouble in Paradise, Dinner at Eight, The Bitter Tea of General Yen and M.
d. The Great Ziegfeld (1936), which won over My Man Godfrey, Dodsworth and Modern Times.
9. Top five of the year (currently)?
Well, I've only seen three movies released in 2012: Ted, Hit and Run and John Carter (of Mars). So Ted, Hit and Run and John Carter (of Mars).
10. Bottom three of the year (currently)?
Ted, Hit and Run and John Carter (of Mars).
"If I let you change me, will that do it? If I do what you tell me, will you love me? All right. All right then, I'll do it. I don't care about me anymore."
That's Vertigo in a nutshell. Ostensibly, it's a murder mystery, but it's really a stalker movie with the viewer thrust into an uncomfortable complicity with a control freak. You could legitimately complain that Hitchcock's normally-reliable suspense angle doesn't work, but that's beside the point. What you're watching is an abusive relationship from the inside out with a sugar coating of murder on top.
Vertigo isn't North By Northwest; Vertigo is Sleeping With the Enemy.
It's an old Hollywood trick. Bible movies were often about sex, Westerns about racism, noir about the emptiness of the American Dream, but served up in a palatable popcorn genre, the studios were able to skirt both Production Code censorship and audience reluctance to talk about anything serious. In the process, they made some of the best movies of the period.
Here, James Stewart plays an ex-cop, Scottie Ferguson, retired from the force after a bout of vertigo during a rooftop chase left a fellow officer dead. [SPOILERS] An old school chum hires Scottie to follow his wife Madeleine (Kim Novak) who believes herself to be possessed by the spirit of a long-dead woman, Carlotta Valdes, who committed suicide during San Francisco's golden age.
Scottie's acrophobia masks a deeper psychological problem—personally, I think the evidence obliquely suggests his mother killed herself when he was young, but that's just my surmise—and he chases Kim Novak around, not for a second believing she's possessed by a ghost but convinced that if he can keep her from toppling over into insanity, he can avoid falling himself. When she instead falls to her death, largely (he believes) because of his own weakness, it pushes him all the way over the edge.
And then after a year, he gets out of the sanitarium, bumps into a Madeleine look-alike (Kim Novak again) and tries to relive the past, this time fixing it. Instead, in the fashion of a classic Greek tragedy, he ensures the very end he was trying to avoid.
It's not a thriller, it's not a mystery, it's not a noir. Maybe it's just a perverse love story dressed up in Hitchcock clothing. I didn't much care for it the first couple of times I saw it, including at the Uptown in Washington, D.C., after its restoration—I found it slow, the spiritual possession angle preposterous (although I imagine Val Lewton could have made you believe every second of it) and the mystery, well, once Kim Novak reveals the plot mid-way through, there is no mystery. But somewhere along the line, Vertigo put its hooks into me and it's my choice as the best movie of 1958.
"If you'll permit the Siren a bit of life advice, barbed clothing critiques from a straight man are a 100% surefire sign of a control freak to be avoided at all costs."—Self-Styled Siren
PICTURE (Drama)
winner: Vertigo (prod. Alfred Hitchcock)
nominees: The Big Country (prod. Gregory Peck and William Wyler); Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (prod. Lawrence Weingarten); The Defiant Ones (prod. Stanley Kramer); Horror of Dracula (prod. Anthony Hinds); A Night To Remember (prod. William MacQuitty); Separate Tables (prod. Harold Hecht); The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (prod. Charles H. Schneer); Touch of Evil (prod. Albert Zugsmith)
PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: The Horse's Mouth (prod. John Bryan and Ronald Neame)
nominees: Auntie Mame (prod. Morton DaCosta); Bell Book and Candle (prod. Julian Blaustein); Gigi (prod. Arthur Freed); Indiscreet (prod. Stanley Donen)
PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: Mon Oncle (prod. Jacques Tati)
nominees: Ascenseur pour l'échafaud (Elevator to the Gallows) (prod. Jean Thuillier); I soliti ignoti (Big Deal on Madonna Street) (prod. Franco Cristaldi); Jalsaghar (The Music Room) (prod. Satyajit Ray); Kakushi-toride no san-akunin (The Hidden Fortess) (prod. Sanezumi Fujimoto and Akira Kurosawa); Popiól i diament (Ashes and Diamonds) (prod. Zespól Filmowy "Kadr")
ACTOR (Drama)
winner: James Stewart (Vertigo)
nominees: Tony Curtis (The Defiant Ones); Peter Cushing (Horror of Dracula); Charlton Heston (Touch of Evil and The Big Country); Christopher Lee (Horror of Dracula); Paul Newman (The Long, Hot Summer and Cat On A Hot Tin Roof); David Niven (Separate Tables); Sidney Poitier (The Defiant Ones); Vincent Price (The Fly); Frank Sinatra (Some Came Running); Spencer Tracy (The Last Hurrah)
ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Alec Guinness (The Horse's Mouth)
nominees: Cary Grant (Indiscreet and Houseboat); Andy Griffith (No Time For Sergeants); Jacques Tati (Mon Oncle)
ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Susan Hayward (I Want To Live!)
nominees: Ingrid Bergman (The Inn Of The Sixth Happiness); Rita Hayworth (Separate Tables); Shirley MacLaine (Some Came Running); Jeanne Moreau (Ascenseur pour l'échafaud a.k.a. Elevator to the Gallows); Kim Novak (Vertigo); Jean Simmons (The Big Country); Elizabeth Taylor (Cat On A Hot Tin Roof)
ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Rosalind Russell (Auntie Mame)
nominees: Ingrid Bergman (Indiscreet); Doris Day (Teacher's Pet); Kim Novak (Bell Book And Candle)
DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: Alfred Hitchcock (Vertigo)
nominees: Richard Brooks (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof); Stanley Kramer (The Defiant Ones); Akira Kurosawa (Kakushi-toride no san-akunin a.k.a. The Hidden Fortess); Satyajit Ray (Jalsaghar a.k.a. The Music Room); Andrzej Wajda (Popiól i diament a.k.a. Ashes and Diamonds); Orson Welles (Touch Of Evil); William Wyler (The Big Country)
DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Jacques Tati (Mon Oncle)
nominees: Vincente Minnelli (Gigi); Mario Monicelli (I soliti ignoti a.k.a. Big Deal On Madonna Street); Ronald Neame (The Horse's Mouth); Richard Quine (Bell Book and Candle)
SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Burl Ives (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and The Big Country)
nominees: Joseph Calleia (Touch of Evil); Ernie Kovacs (Bell Book and Candle); Eli Wallach (The Lineup); Orson Welles (Touch Of Evil)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Hermione Gingold (Gigi and Bell Book and Candle)
nominees: Marlene Dietrich (Touch of Evil); Barbara Bel Geddes (Vertigo); Wendy Hiller (Separate Tables); Deborah Kerr (Bonjour tristesse); Hope Lange (The Young Lions); Angela Lansbury (The Long, Hot Summer); Tina Louise (God's Little Acre); Lee Remick (The Long, Hot Summer); Gwen Verdon (Damn Yankees!); Kay Walsh (The Horse's Mouth); Cara Williams (The Defiant Ones)
SCREENPLAY
winner: Orson Welles, from the novel Badge Of Evil by Whit Masterson (Touch of Evil)
nominees: Alec Guinness, from the novel by Joyce Cary (The Horse's Mouth); Agenore Incrocci, Furio Scarpelli, Suso Cecchi d’Amico and Mario Monicelli (I soliti ignoti a.k.a. Big Deal On Madonna Street); Ryuzo Kikushima, Hideo Oguni, Shinobu Hashimoto and Akira Kurosawa (Kakushi-toride no san-akunin a.k.a. The Hidden Fortress); Alec Coppel and Samuel A. Taylor, from the novel D'entre les morts by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac (Vertigo)
SPECIAL AWARDS
Bernard Herrmann (Vertigo) (Score); Robert Burks (Vertigo) (Cinematography); Ray Harryhausen (The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad) (Special Effects)
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