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Thursday May 29^th^

Hi "SSOS" - In case you really are wondering, *The Electric Horseman* has been on TCM at least three times. Unfortunately, I can't place any specificity to when these showings occurred. I think the presentations happened at least two years ago. The film was shown during a salute to Robert Redford - http://www.tcm.com/thismonth/article/?cid=25811 Also during an evening of films "Directed By Sydney Pollack" http://www.tcm.com/thismonth/article/?cid=25807 (Besides *Horseman*, this tribute included *The Way We Were*, *Absence Of Malice* and *The Scalphunters*.) and during a past "31 Days of Oscar" event when *The Electric Horseman* was included in an evening devoted to "Best Sound Nominees" http://www.tcm.com/thismonth/article/?cid=67244 And color me surprised that TCM didn't have access to *Out Of Africa* (or chose not to include it) in this coming Monday's event.) The film has popped up on TCM at least twice a year for the last five years. Or so it seens. On the one occasion that it would be a truly welcome presentation, it isn't being shown. Personally, I still would have enjoyed a day full of replays of his Essentials selections. I know there had to be at least six or seven titles from those seasons that TCM has access to on such a short notice. ( *Wuthering Heights*, *Rear Window*, *Singing In The Rain*, *Casablanca*, *Citizen Kane* ) He even introduced *Tootsie* as an "Essential" during his second season as host. Now, if TCM has Robert Osborne introduce Sydney Pollack's "Essential" presentation of *Tootsie* on Monday night, _that_ waould be a really special event. Kyle In Hollywood

Just announced change to the schedule to remember the passing of TCM's friend and colleague Sydney Pollack. http://www.tcm.com/movienews/index/?cid=202472 TCM will revise its primetime schedule on Monday, June 2nd in order to honor the late director Sydney Pollack (Out of Africa, They Shoot Horses, Don't They?): Here is the new lineup for Monday, June 2 (All times EDT) 8:00 PM *The Slender Thread* (’65) (his directorial debut) 10:00 PM *Three Days of the Condor* (’75) 12:00 AM *Tootsie* (’82) 2:00 AM *Jeremiah Johnson* (’72)

Wednesday May 28^th^

*"Does anybody have any links to film blogs I can read up on for pleasure?"* - Ben-Hur1860 Well, you can always find a good read at the TCM blog - "MovieMorlocks". Just click on the icon in the banner at the top of this page. Over there I recommend the writings of 'moirafinnie' and "High Hurdler" highly. Very highly. Kyle In Hollywood

*"now if I could only pull off that Rita Hayworth vibe.... "* - Minya It's all in the hair. kjk

Tuesday May 27^th^ *Affair In Trinidad* (Thanks to "BackAlleyNoir")

An essay by Virginia Heffernan in the NYTimes Magazine March 2^nd^ 2008 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/magazine/02wwln-medium-t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print *Speak, ‘Tootsie’* By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN *“Tootsie” came out in 1982*, when most Americans assumed that if you didn’t catch a movie while it was playing in theaters, you might never see it. Moviegoers were largely ignoring the climactic developments in home-entertainment technology — including the so-called format war between Betamax and VHS — that would, in the coming decades, transform not just movie watching but also home design and romantic relationships. The best format for audiovisual data storage was still considered to be the human memory. And so we memorized movies. I don’t mean the big oversold lines from the trailers — those make-my-day catchphrases became deafening only later — but rather as much of a screenplay as we could possibly stuff into our heads during a showing. "I begged you to get some therapy." That was by far my favorite “Tootsie” line. Sydney Pollack as George hisses it to Dustin Hoffman playing Michael-as-Dorothy at the Russian Tea Room. George, a talent agent, assumes that Michael, his client, must have identity issues to dress as a woman. (In fact, Michael dresses as Dorothy to get a well-paid part on a soap opera.) Was George, though, really hissing? Or was he whispering in worry? My brother and I discussed this and tried the words a dozen ways, as Pollack’s original line-reading faded from memory. Other kids preferred the Bill Murray character’s clenched deadpan, "That is one nutty hospital" and "You ****!" If you dared, and if you had had any luck doing Princess Leia ( Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope ), you might even hazard Jessica Lange’s tearful vanilla-rose breathiness: "I really love you, Dorothy, but I can’t love you." Or her character Julie’s magical self-description: "I’m a born defroster." How we all honed our impersonations. It’s only today, however, having just studied the 25th-anniversary DVD of “Tootsie,” that I finally have the definitive rendition of the Pollack line. Anyone want to hear it? *Actually, what’s clear* from this sparkly new edition of the film is that “Tootsie” was conceived, consciously or not, to be re-enacted. Watch it just once, and you’ll find it eminently memorizable, quotable, performable. A large part of the enjoyment of “Tootsie” is the happy anticipation of trying out the material on your own stage. And that’s what makes it great. However little we like to admit it, mnemonic power and artistic endurance — verse by Shakespeare, verse by the Beatles — are closely linked. “Tootsie,” which the American Film Institute voted the country’s second-funniest film of all time (after another quotable drag show, “Some Like It Hot”), fairly begged the viewer to learn it by heart. Some of this was the movie’s sustained visibility. (It remained in theaters for more than 20 weeks.) But “Tootsie” is also a movie about repetition, learning lines and performing. Hoffman first appears in a montage of floodlighted stages, clutching audition scripts and fielding unwanted direction. As the movie goes on, we watch scenes played one, two, even three times, and in every other one, it seems, someone is seducing, lying or outright acting — delivering lines that have been thought through, often word for word, in advance. Even the straight exchanges derive humor from repetition, including echoes of Abbott and Costello. “You rewrote the necktie scene, right?” begins a late-night chat between Michael and Bill Murray’s Jeff. “With the necktie.” “With the necktie?” “Yeah, with the necktie.” “With the necktie!” And a few beats later: “I am Michael Dorsey. . . . I am Michael Dorsey. I am Michael Dorsey.” Like a good ad jingle, “Tootsie” dialogue works itself into you. *The “Tootsie” screenplay* is often cited in film schools, where it is revered, as a rare example of successful composition by committee. (Larry Gelbart and Murray Schisgal are credited, while the script doctors Barry Levinson, Elaine May and several others are not.) The script is said to have undergone some 20 rewrites. Whether this communal writing process should be credited for the film’s elegance isn’t clear, but something in the script’s obsessive reworking seems to have supplied the actors with dozens of pretexts for repeating themselves. We get self-affirmation, double takes, misunderstandings and stoned speechifying — all occasions for people to be redundant. As a trigger for repetition, recording technology in the movie, including video cameras and answering machines, is also pressed into service. When Dorothy is working on the set of “Southwest General” (the soap opera at the center of the film), her voice and image are picked up on monitors and in earpieces. And when Teri Garr’s wonderful and whiny character, Sandy, chastises Michael for failing to respond to her repeated phone messages, he scapegoats his answering machine. Repetition and rehearsal are close cousins of artifice and deception. Yet the specter looming throughout the film is not the fear of fakery and surveillance but rather its opposite: a more contemporary, YouTube-era fear of not acting, of being forced to improvise without rehearsal, live before a studio audience. Of being seen as you are. Honesty and directness are grim business in “Tootsie.” Disguise and performance, in front of recording devices, even, are the only way that characters in “Tootsie” can learn to be good. No wonder the film is so appealing to people who like movies; it’s a performance that celebrates performance at the expense of reality. Thus we get Michael’s moral of the story, spoken to Julie: - “I was a better man with you, as a woman, than I ever was with a woman, as a man.” In one of the anniversary DVD’s interesting extras, Hoffman admits in hindsight that getting the line straight was difficult. That’s not surprising. It’s a tricky idea — that acting is the royal road to moral responsibility. But I suspect the line wouldn’t be so hard for actors today. It is, after all, the same conviction that drives the stars of YouTube and reality television, the people who at even their lowest, rawest, ugliest moments still manage to look the camera in the eye. These young actors often say that the process of making themselves camera-ready, along with the scrutiny of an audience, serves as a kind of spiritual audit without which they could never be honest or even learn to live at all.

*"Is there really no better movie for Washington than "Sleepless in Seattle?"* - skimpole I was just waiting to see if others would throw in with these - *Tugboat Annie* (1933) w/ Marie Dressler and Wallace Beery http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title.jsp?stid=1511 "Annie Brennan, known in Secoma (WA) as one of the best skippers in the Pacific Northwest, finds her boat Narcissus frequently outmaneuvred by rival Red Severn." *Ruggles Of Red Gap* (1935) w/ Charles Laughton, Mary Boland and Charlie Ruggles http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title.jsp?stid=88738 "In Paris in the spring of 1908, the Earl of Burnstead regretfully informs his manservant, Marmaduke Ruggles, that he has lost Ruggles in a poker game to the genial, but roughhewn millionaire Egbert "Sourdough" Floud, who, on the insistence of his dominating, society-conscious wife Effie, intends to take Ruggles to their home in Red Gap, Washington." (And I vote for *Ruggles of Red Gap*) *"Anyway, what about West Virginia?"* *Matewan* (1987) by John Sayles http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title.jsp?stid=83092 "Historical drama about the coal miners' strike in Matewan, West Virginia in the 1920s." Kyle In Hollywood

I never liked the film version of *Suddenly Last Summer* but have high praise for the BBC / Great Performances version from the 90s. http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title.jsp?stid=479894 Maggie Smith, Natasha Richardson and Rob Lowe star in this version which is directed by Richard Eyre ( *Notes On A Scandal*, *Country* ) and this version benefits from a more tolerant attitude toward the subject matter. . This version is on DVD so it should be available at NetFlix. And let me second the recommendation of *The Heiress* for _anyone_ wanting to learn more about Montgomery Clift. Kyle In Hollywood

Monday May 26^th^ Happy Memorial Day. (1917) - Thanks to the Library of Congress

Monday May 26^th^ Happy Memorial Day. *The Longest Day*

Sunday May 25^th^ (1917) Thanks to the Library Of Congress

Sunday May 25^th^

Michelleanovel - You were right. It is a Jean Arthur film - *The Devil And Miss Jones* (1941) Starring Jean Arthur, Robert Cummings and Charles Coburn http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title.jsp?stid=72933 "A department store owner goes undercover as an employee to thwart union activists." Kyle In Hollywood

Saturday May 24^th^ (1917) Thanks to The Library Of Congress

Saturday May 24^th^

*"As best I can tell, CBS and TVLand have the same majority owner (National Amusements)."* - Fedya Thanks, Fedya. I have a faint recollection that CBS intended to give *E.T.- The Extraterrstial* the *Wizard Of Oz* treatment with annual showings on the network in the way that ABC handles *The Ten Commandments* or *The Sound Of Music* and NBC uses *It's A Wonderful Life*. But I don't believe that CBS still shows the film at all anymore, right? Kyle In Hollywood

*"Agree about 1941, Kyle. I wanted to see it, but the film was on too late. Can the film be THAT bad?"* - SSOS I saw it once - on pay television - and it was not too funny. (Actually, not funny at all.) Thinking about it this morning, I think the film wanted to be a farce - a la *The Russians Are Coming...* - but ended up just being a poorly executed screwball comedy. Yet it might be interesting to see again in the context of being Steven Speilberg's first WWII movie. It is interesting to note that Speilberg has made more films on that subject than any other. Kyle In Hollywood

Friday May 23^rd^ (1917) Thanks to the Library Of Congress

Friday May 23^rd^ *Battleground*

*"That's why I'm a little disappointed "Jaws" and "Close Encounters" are a part of the festival again."* - SSOS And me too. It would have been nice for us regular viewers if *1941* had been incorporated into the evening a bit earlier. I also had high hopes that TCM had made an effort to spruce up the Speilberg films a bit by showing the "Special Edition" of *Close Encounters...* tonight. (TCM even showed the trailer for the "Special Edition" the other day.) But in his intro tonight, Robert Osborne made no mention that that was the case so I guess not. Oh well... I still find the film a beautifully optimistic story. And didn't CBS have a long-term lease for *E.T. - The Extraterrestial* at one point? I guess that it expired now that TVLand has been showing the film. Too bad TCM didn't get their hands on that one. THAT would've made the evening truly special. Kyle In Hollywood

Hi 'traceyk65'! It's always good to see you here. *"Fred MacMurray--probably one of the most versatile and under-rated leading men in Hollywood."* Have you seen the line-up for "Summer Under The Stars"? http://www.tcm.com/schedule/month/?cid=&timezone=PST&oid=8/1/2008 Give a look to Saturday, August 9^th^ Kyle In Hollywood

Thursday May 22^nd^ An 8-Day Event In Honor of Memorial Day Including WWI Posters from The Library Of Congress (1917) Thanks to the Library Of Congress

Thursday May 22^nd^ An 8-Day Event In Honor Of Memorial Day. *Sands Of Iwo Jima*