GENE WILDER

The blu's of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother and Haunted Honeymoon have had their release bumped up to next week in light of Wilder's passing, and I'm guessing my library will get them. I'm pretty sure I saw bits of HH as a kid, and didn't even think it was funny then, but how is Sherlock?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHmsRBeiSTw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekmo8EacU70

I remember the reviews of 'smarter' being lousy, then seeing the movie and thought it 'great' and 'nothing wrong with it', that'd be 40 years ago or thereabouts

fwiw I loved The Frisco Kid as a kid, kind of want to re-watch it and see if it holds up.

TCM showing Young Frankenstein, Start the Revolution Without Me, The Frisco Kid, Bonnie and Clyde and a 2008 convo between Wilder and Alec Baldwin tonight.

Did Wilder direct Haunted Honeymoon? That is a terrible movie that I will absolutely watch again.

― I wish you could see my home. It's... it's so... exciting (Jon not Jon), Tuesday, August 30, 2016 5:48 PM (two months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i rewatched Woody's Everything About Sex last night. I still believe Wilder loved that sheep.

Looked at Silver Streak again today, and man it stinks, with the exception of the shoe-polish scene Pryor rewrote, and the one where RP poses as a steward and turns the tables on Patrick McGoohan right after PM blurts out the N-word at him. Otherwise it's a superlame North by Northwest ripoff. Not even Wilder's charm gets employed much, and Jill Clayburgh is just The Girl.

Yeah silver streak sucks
So does stir crazy
There's no gainsaying it.

yeah i got suckered into Silver Streak on Netflix, man was that a mess. Wilder and Pryor are very likeable, I'll give it that, but it's really without structure, like they just kept filming and figured "I'm sure we'll start having ideas for scenes soon!" Not too many worthwhile jokes either, and very little of what happens really depends on the characters. I will say most of the effects at the end are pretty good, except one really obvious composite shot, but why this comedy winds up with a giant setpiece like that is beyond me.

I have an irrational, sentimental love for Silver Streak - it got repeated on British TV all the time when I was very young, and was my first "favourite movie" (along with Superman II, probably). I rewatched it a few months ago and really enjoyed it. I mean, obviously it's not a classic, and Wilder's seduction of Clayburgh is a hilariously awful - but there's lots of good stuff outside of the Pryor scenes: Ned Beatty being a jerk, and then a hero, and then dead; Wilder getting thrown off the train for the second time; the fight with Jaws (!); the train crash; McGoohan's grisly death. It's "adult" but totally simple - a great movie for kids, basically.

Also (retrospectively) the farewell scene between Wilder and Pryror at the police station is quite moving. ("If you ever need anything, don't call me.")

Start the Revolution Without Me predates the genre spoofs of Mel Brooks by a few years, and feels like something of a dry run for those as a result; TV vet Bud Yorkin doesn't have Brooks' precision, and quite a few of the gags here feel a little too... obviously carefully crafted, I guess, to have the exhilaration of great comic filmmaking. But Wilder is never funnier than whenever he's trying to work his way through an awkward/tense situation, and there are plenty of those here, and I appreciated the takedown of the laboured metaphorical dialogue typical of historical epics ("To pull the tail of a lion is to open the mouth of trouble and reveal the teeth of revenge biting the tongue of deceit"). Also, Hugh Griffith's performance as King Louis is an unexpected marvel: he's genuinely endearing, and far more poignant than the film requires.