JHaft

stoneyburke, I guess Marx Brothers and exploding fish make for a potent combination ... :-) Thanks for your contributions....I appreciate your ideas....

lzcutter, I urge you to write TCM and tell them your feelings. I have done so and I am encouraging all who love classic movies to make their voices heard.....you can send a message in the Contact Us area.....! -j

traceyk65, Well then it's a good thing Duck Soup clocks in at about an hour! :-) You may have a point there about the 3 Stooges. See stoneyburke's post earlier about violence in comedy.....

lzcutter, You are so right. Molly Haskell has a brilliant and subtle mind, and I know for a fact that she adores movies. So does her husband Andrew Sarris. This might, as you suggest, be an issue with the director. She does look stiff and uncomfortable. So does Bob Osborne (which doesn't usually happen). Maybe the interview format isn't right or maybe two minutes is too short of a window. Whatever the case, they're failing in their mission to spark the viewer's interest and passion about the movies. You're right: whether you like the movies or not, you've got to be passionate about them, or they don't deserve to be an Essential.... Thanks for that post.

Rusty, I love Superfly too. They sometimes air it on other channels, like BET. If you like the music, check out the Rhino box. The second disc has some very sweet alternative cuts of the classic covers.... -j

Did anyone else find it eerie that a bankrupt Freedonia wanted $20M from Dumont to finance tax cuts? China owns almost $250B of our T bills (and Japan almost $650B!) to bankroll tax cuts over here and keep interest rates low........as artie johnson used to say, "veddddy interestink....but shtoopid!"

...i also think, though, that Duck Soup is a much harder hitting satire of geo politics than the literal-minded Great Dictator....in a way, Duck Soup is more timeless, because it's not satirizing actual people

stoneyburke, thanks for your comments. movies are very personal and there really is no right answer. and i actually do agree with you that chaplin's films are very narcissistic. at worst, they're pure treacle. so i'm in agreement with you there....i do happen to think the guy can be very funny though. The Great Dictator and Hard Times both make me laugh. Some of the later stuff (Limelight) i find too maudlin to stomach, though.....

stoneyburke, wanted to respond to your thought about chaplin vs marx bros. the marx bros were indeed way ahead of their time, but i think in terms of film-making (cinematography) chaplin was also way ahead of his time. he showed rare genius in movies like The Gold Rush. marx bros tended just to set up the camera and let the action roll (especially in the early paramount pics). it was a procenium perspective, as if watched from the audience in a theater....chaplin really pushed the envelope in film directing......in this respect, whether you think the guy is funny or not, he's a genius (at least from my POV) - j

Rusty, Heaing about it ain't as bad as actually tasting it. Swedes eat it in a sandwich -- brown bread, red onion, sour cream. and lots of snaps. .....j

Rusty, Did you mean the lutefisk is herring or surstrumming? the surstrumming is herring from the baltic sea....(strumming, which by the way is really really yummy when not buried under ground for years.....) the lutefisk, i thought, was cod.... - J

jarhfive, that white sauce is a bechamel....cream, flour, butter....and a lifesaver....i usually drown the fish, potatoes, and peas in the sauce to avoid the slimy texture and putrid flavor i think it's very appropriate, by the way, that a string about the marx bros has turned to the vicissitudes of cured fish.......

filmlover, Your points are very well taken. Some movies are definitely "essential" but not necessarily palatable. I loved your two examples: 2001 Space Odyssey (which I have never made it completely through without falling asleep myself) and Red Shoes (which I agree is academically interesting but almost unwatchable). My original point about Duck Soup, though, was that this movie is HILARIOUS. It's an Essential that happens to be really really funny. And really apt. (The points it makes about politics ring eerily true in today's times....)

stoneybrooke, it's cod that's been cured in lye

Jarhfive, Love your story about lutfisk. My in-laws are Swedes (they live in a little town called Horby near Lund) and every Christmas they would ladle out that yucky concoction. I always used to say "I never met a fish i didn't like" until I tried lutfisk. The strategy employed by the rest of the family was to drown the fish in huge helpings of mashed potatoes and peas! Have you been made to suffer surstrumming yet? it's an old peasant dish...literally rotten herring. the can explodes when you open it....the stench is not to be believed....you need to wash it down with lots of snaps.....

Movieman1957, Yes, your are 100% right. The Bros did try out some of their MGM treatments in roadshows... Though the pacing of those sleek MGM products are much brisker than the early Paramount stuff, like Animal Crackers, where you could drive a Mack truck through the pauses......

MOLLY HASKELL responded to an email I sent her via her website... in all due fairness, I'd like to post her reply: " right to crorrect me, I should have qualified it by saying over the years, women have tended not to go for comedy of the wild physical sort -- a phenomenon Andrew S[arris] noticed before I did in the reaction of his students. It's hard to make subtle qualifications when you h ave two minutes to say everything, but I'll be mindful in the future. I'm trying to give a bit of a woman's slant on the program, something relatively nonexistent in this sort of thing. " You see, stoneyburke? speaking up sometimes does make a diff....

Larry, Agree with you wholeheartedly about Calhern. He was a unique and versatile talent. - J

Movieman1957, "There was a story that one of the writers of a stage show interrupted a conversation he was having when he thought he heard one of his original lines." I think that story refers to George S. Kaufman.... if it actually happened....probably apocryphal.....but the kernel of the story is very true....the Marx Bros used their road shows to improvise and improve the patter and lazzi another reason why they had troupes and troupes of writers on their movies...their writers had writers...each brother had his own writer....without the benefit of the road tours, it may have been harder for them to know what was really funny, and what was not....

PS, stoneyburke, i've got to believe that letters to TCM are at least read. and if enough viewers gripe about something, they'll probably do something... but even if they don't, it's so important that at the very least, our views are voiced to them sorry to hear about your local radio station.....that seems to be happening in every major market these days

Zeppo is pretty icky. I love how he is actually introduced BY NAME by Margaret in Duck Soup when he first comes on...."This is Rufus T Firefly's personal secretary, Bob Rowland." That always cracks me up....as if we need to know his name.... As long as we're discussing testosterone, etc, what do you think about Louis Calhern in Duck Soup? For a guy who usually played the heavy (Asphalt Jungle, to some extent Notorious) and later Shakespear (King Lear on Bway), to me, he's an amazing straight man to the boys' antics......

BTW, I'm hearing a lot of agreement about Haskell. I have written TCM to request that Haskell not be asked back. It would help a lot if others who agree did the same!!

Love that post. As for the sexiness and testosterone, I always get a kick out of how they tried to position Zeppo as the hunk. At the end of Duck Soup, his t-shirt is ripped exactly in the place where his ripped abs show.... Totally agree with your point that the brothers were genius and way ahead of their time. And your comments about You Betcha Life were spot on. Groucho was a great comic intellect. And Harpo was actually academically quite erudite....a member of the Algonquin round table, etc etc

Yes, Chico's solo breaks were hilarious. Harpo's did tend to get a bit cloying in the MGM pics....but his virtuosity was always fun to watch. (I love the harp solo he takes in Night at the Opera, where an old crone watches bemusedly in the background....)

Great analysis, Rusty. I actually don't remember Bob Osborne saying Groucho didn't like the solos....just Osborne....but I could be wrong, of course. Groucho used to be very proud of his brothers' musical abilities, and used to brag to people that Chico never practiced a day in his life.....Groucho also took a couple priceless musical solos himself on the guitar in the Cocoanuts, where he sings, "Everyone Says I Love You"..... As to "on the set time," there's a hilarious fact about the Brothers....it seemed that when movies were being shot, it was very hard to get all of them on the set at the same time. Chico was off gambling or chasing skirts, Groucho and Harpo were AWOL. So starting with Animal Crackers, they used to keep a giant cage on the set! When one of the brothers would show up, in the cage they would go. Once all of them were there, filming would recommence.