If you, like many among us, thought that Fred Astaire maybe didn’t have any feelings about Steve Martin, allow me to gently correct you. He hated him for making Pennies From Heaven, that bonkers-depressing 1981 musical that Pauline Kael loved (which, aside, I have always meant to develop an Opinion about Pauline Kael, because it seems like something that smart people do, but I’ve never subsequently gotten around to reading any of her work, so my opinion remains pretty much just: Oh, I’ve heard of her!)
Anyhow, it’s (obviously) based in no small part on a bunch of Astaire’s 1930s movies, but with, you know, Modern Sadness Added, and Fred Astaire saw it, and said, “I have never spent two more miserable hours in my life…it makes you cry it’s so distasteful.” So now you know that Steve Martin made Fred Astaire cry once, if you didn’t already. What do you think about Pauline Kael, and more importantly, what do you think I should think about her? Please text in your vote now.
I haven’t seen that movie in forever so I don’t know if it’s that awful, but if that was the most distasteful thing he ever saw, at least Astaire died before Adam Sandler started making movies.
If only Adam Sandler had died before Adam Sandler started making movies.
Was there anything to that rumor that the reason the Astaire estate blocks any attempt at a biopic is cause they don’t want to anyone digging too deeply into Fred’s past cause thar be skeletons in them there closets?
I don’t know about skeletons, but I would imagine he would have been demanding just because of the precision needed to dance like that.
Yeah…I thought it was commonly know that Fred Astaire was a huge dick. Don’t know about any specific skeletons (ALTHOUGH I BET ANNE HELEN PETERSON COULD TELL US A THING OR FIVE), but anything I’ve ever read about him mentions how mean and demanding he was.
I think I read the opposite about at least one occasion – that on the set of Singin’ in the Rain, Gene Kelly was such a huge dick to Debbie Reynolds (who was very young and not a very experienced dancer at the time) that she often fled the set in tears, and Fred Astaire, who was working on a nearby set, found her and took her under his wing for the remainder of the shoot. That always endeared him to me, because Debbie Reynolds is perfection and should be treated as such!
I bet Carrie Fisher wouldn’t agree with you. 🙂
Carrie Fisher told that story on the Graham Norton Show! She said her mother and Donald O’Connor hated Gene Kelly and used to hide out on him, commiserating with one another on how to get back at him. Didn’t mention the Fred Astaire part, though.
OH GOD NO. I love Gene Kelly and I especially Singin’ in the Rain and love the chemistry that the three of them have in that movie…
But Debbie Reynolds has always seemed kind of terrible to me outside SITR, except for the fact that I felt bad for her that Eddie Fisher left her for Liz Taylor.
We were watching that the other day & got to IMDBing it and realized that Kelly was like 40 and Reynolds 19 or 20 when it came out. That’s not gross or anything.
(Kelly could dance like whoa given his age!)
Oh, I miss her “Scandals of Classic Hollywood” posts!
Allegedly his widow blocks, or blocked, the release of his wonderful 60s TV specials on DVD and Blu-Ray, even though the restoration done on them for VHS release in the 90s won an Emmy. He made them all with Barrie Chase, who was his favorite partner and imho the second best dancer he ever worked with (I think the best was not Ginger, whom I don’t think really matched him as a dancer, although they were a great screen couple, but the magnificent Cyd Charisse).
Astaire fell deeply in love with Chase, and pursued her avidly (Charisse, otoh, seems to have scared him a bit). She politely rejected him, and he continued to work with him and he doesn’t seem to have become TOO creepy, but his widow and/or her estate have supposedly blocked the DVDs.
I am not a Pauline Kael fan. However I do love that Lucas named a villain in Willow after her.
Oh man, General Kael! I never made the connection! (PS: Willow is THE BEST)
honestly i hate astaire and i have never seen a single role of his where he wasn’t a smug asshole so i’m ready to smugly fling WHO CARES at him about this.
i mean, the movie is definitely a downer and all, but it’s genius for all that, and a great 80s turn on 30s sentimentality. (i think when i saw it, i was annoyed at how much either sex or violence was in it? it was definitely way too violent towards women in a nonchalant 80s way, but again: for what it was going for, it’s a well-executed film and very clever.)
i think it’s on TCM later this month. actually, yes. on the 30th – all day it’s Pennies from Heaven themed with movies featuring the song. in case anyone needs to DVR. (remind me, i haven’t seen the original title yet)
basically all i remember from this movie is the sad rouge on the nipple scene
Well, Steve Martin also cries in a diner at one point. And after cheating on the woman who does the nipple rouging. And in the rain. And the ending is really grimdark when he gets a gun.
On a positive note, Christopher Walken does an amazing tap dance on a bar (vaguely reminiscent of the Shanghai Lil number, I feel? my memory says so) ETA: link! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54iR0xFkEfQ
Oh man, I’d forgotten that was the first time I heard “Let’s Misbehave.” I’m imagining Jack Robinson dancing to that now. It’s delightful.
It’s so weird seeing Walken roles from before he started being a caricature of himself full-time.
Wow! I didn’t think Walken could succeed at that type of scene, but he clearly could pull it off.
Those are some High-Waisted Boxers he’s got on.
Walken has always had the moves: https://vimeo.com/90407771
Dance-off between him and Hiddleston, immediately!
O.0… I feel like I spent the entire clip very much like the woman he was singing to …
Preach. I don’t care how great a dancer he was, his characters are always insufferable and his co-stars always look (or are, or both) a zillion years younger than him.
I have hate-watched SO MANY of his films, just so I can say that Yes, I Have Seen Them All, And No, My Opinion Has No Room To Be Wrong.
I think I might be nearing 100%, but I refuse to watch Finian’s Rainbow, because I can’t bear to see his creepy undead old person macking on whatever cute young woman they get to go goggly-eyed over him in it.
Anyway, I also blame him for making Ginger Rogers boring and that’s just not on. She’s always so much better when she’s playing the lower class struggling showgirl, not the successful accepted-into-high-society type, but of course Astaire had to have the white tails. (You can see it in Eleanor Powell, too – but her athletic style of dancing didn’t let them put her in the sleekly glamorous furs-and-diamonds role.)
(Also hate-watching Astaire movies is a safe outlet for angry feelings and as much as I hate him, I admit he’s a good dancer, so it’s fun to indulge in some harmless ranting about something not important, that has no real impact on my life. I’ve found that to be an unexpected benefit, when it’s so easy to get built up on anxiety about every other thing in life, though I only recently realized why hate-watching this or other movies/books was so appealing.)
YES to Ginger Rogers, she is so much better in stuff like Stage Door than she is with creepy makeup settling in his wrinkles as he gurns at younger women Fred Astaire.
I dislike Astaire and most of his movies, but I will be fair to Finian’s Rainbow and he didn’t mack on anyone. Which is far better than most movies with aging stars. Mostly he tried to set his daughter up with a hot folk singer/liberal farm collation leader and bickers with leprechaun. It is by far, the most bearable Astaire movie.
(Not that it’s not problematic in many, many ways that musicals that are first produced in 1947 generally are.)
Despite his occasionally awful characters (ugh Carefree was so incredibly horrific–he’s a psychotherapist who starts seeing Rogers because she’s not ready to commit to her fiancee; but Astaire falls in love with Rogers, so HE HYPNOTIZES HER INTO FALLING IN LOVE WITH HIM instead of fiancee, and then has a moment of conscience and unhypnotizes her, and then tries to re-hypnotizes her; and it’s all treated like a big funny joke.), I do have a soft spot for Astaire. Mostly for the story about Debbie Reynolds was hiding under a piano and crying and in pain from over-rehearsing because Gene Kelly was being an ass on the Singin in the Rain set when she couldn’t get a scene right; even though she was only 17 and had never danced before. And Astaire encouraged her and let her in on his own rehearsal (which he usually never let anyone watch) to show her that even good dancers have trouble.
that is probably the ONLY positive story i’ve heard about him! everything else makes me believe he happily represented to the public & Hollywood the same character he played on the screen. i mean, i know, studio system and private lives vs fan-mag-approved private lives.
I know pretty much zero about him otherwise–except for the fact that despite all their movies together, Rogers and he never became friends and neither liked being saddled together. (And also supposedly it was him and his wife that kept the onscreen couple from kissing in all but one of their movies.)
Yeah, I am mostly neutral on Astaire except for in Funny Face, which has just such a gross and weird premise. Get away from Audrey Hepburn, old man!
She’s so perfect already when she’s in the jumper-dress in the bookstore! Ughhh. Then he comes and ruins her.
Daddy Long Legs, same thing: except he’s perving on Leslie Caron, who is essentially his foster-daughter in the movie.
And it’s on Netflix and roomie has played that damn movie way too many times and I’m like, hello, she’s young enough to be his daughter and it’s creepy, stop watching this movie. But I do love the music and dancing if I pretend he’s not creeping on this poor innocent French girl he’s sponsored.
Everything I’ve read indicates that she wanted him as her leading man in Funny Face because it had always been a dream of hers to dance with him. Poor, falsely accused Fred.
The original Pennies from Heaven is ALSO HIDEOUSLY depressing! I bought one of those cheap double-feature classic DVDs ages ago because it had His Girl Friday on it so duh, but one day I was bored and decided to watch it and was a puddle of tears and regret for the next many hours.
ohhh that sounds great! i mean, not, but sometimes a horrendously depressing Pre-Code ends up being fun because the melodrama is just so high, you know?
(is it just me?)
I really have to remember to set my DVR for it before next week!
Yeah I always forget how all those big depression era musicals usually end with everyone on a breadline or something
I think every quote of Pauline Kael’s I’ve ever read sounded like a witty repartee somebody might make before taking a belt of a drink from a high ball glass. Like she was Anthony Lane’s favorite aunt.
I love this, so much and want this to be sort of like the New Yorker rendition of Auntie Mame. I don’t always agree with her (or him) but it’s generally a damn pleasure to read.
Also, um, I’m okay if you want to tell me that Last Year at Marienbad is profoundly deep and the fact that as a sick, sleep-deprived junior taking a theory class it more or less just made me nauseated is a demonstration of my lack of appreciation for art, the surreal, and human decency, but Pauline understands!
All I remember about it is Christopher Walken’s OMFG striptease to “Let’s Misbehave”. It was the first time I’d seen him dance; I was gobsmacked!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMKrLI4v_jU
That’s amazing. I think I never saw the whole movie.
I know Kael is supposed to be good for you or whatever but I just can’t bring myself to try it.
I have every possible opinion simultaneously about Pauline Kael and that’s basically the only way I know how to deal with her. She is beautiful and terrible.
As the dawn.
I love Pauline Kael even when she’s wrong, and the original “Pennies from Heaven” with Bob Hoskins and Cheryl Campbell seemed very moving to me when I watched it in college, but now I’m afraid I just wouldn’t be able to sit through all the manfeels.
#hottake
Okay absolutely you should hate Pauline Kael because my fave Renata Adler’s take down of Pauline Kael is nastiness on par with Ayn Rand, and probably the greatest piece of criticism of all time. Some background: Adler wrote a review in the NYTRB of Kael’s criticisms which had been published by TNY, FOR WHICH ADLER WAS A STAFF WRITER.
I will quote: “Over the years, that is, Ms. Kael’s quirks, mannerisms, tactics, and excesses have not only taken over her work so thoroughly that hardly anything else, nothing certainly of intelligence or sensibility, remains; they have also proved contagious, so that the content and level of critical discussion, of movies but also of other forms, have been altered astonishingly for the worse.”
Please read in full: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1980/08/14/the-pe…
Renata Adler’s interview on the Longform podcast is worth a listen if you’re interested in this. Fascinating, http://longform.org/posts/longform-podcast-156-re…
Wow! The article review you linked to is ONE SICK BURN. I love it.
A pretty good opinion to have about Pauline Kael might be “I think she was opinionated as fuck and really smug about the fact that she never watched a movie a second time in case she changed her mind about it WHICH WAS NOT PERMITTED IN THE WORLD OF KAEL but she also transformed movie criticism for the better.”
I actually like her a lot (well, not so much her earlier stuff: man, she was anti-gay) but her opinions were an impenetrable wall. She never, ever allowed herself to be wrong. I can’t even quite imagine trying to have a conversation with her about anything, let alone movies.
We don’t need to have an opinion on Pauline Kael, because Renata Adler famously did, in that NYRB article where she took the knives out: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1980/08/14/the-pe…
Adler herself was a movie reviewer for the NYT for a while and the thing we know about Kael and Adler is that Kael is famous for her movie criticism and Adler is famous for her article critcising Kael.
I know PK really really disliked Meryl Streep, so let that inform your opinion however it may.
All I know about Pauline Kael is that a bunch of her reviews were on this Microsoft-published multimedia CD-ROM movie database thing, and Tween Seas was convinced by reading her reviews that she had terrible opinions about everything and hated fun. (But also Tween Seas did not have the best taste in movies, so.)
I had the same CD-ROM (which you could update online!!) and I came away with basically the same impression, but the woman really liked ‘Say Anything…’ damn it and that counted a lot with me.
Oh, she loved many varieties of fun, and was excoriated for her “lowbrow” tastes by people like John Simon. She just didn’t always revere the same kind of fun other people with “lowbrow” tastes did.
She loved both versions of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHES and nearly gave her editor apoplexy by praising RE-ANIMATOR. She disliked Sergio Leone and, later, George Miller and James Cameron, but loved most of Spielberg while hating RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, which she blamed on Lucas. She loved, absolutely loved, the 80s FLASH GORDON and the De Laurentis KING KONG, but despised STAR WARS, in which she said the only scene with a genuine sense of wonder was the twin sunset. She loved Peckinpah but compared Kubrick’s A CLOCKWORK ORANGE to pornography “made by a cold and exacting German professor.”
I am grateful for the opportunity to imagine Fred Astaire hating something so much that he can only express the emotion through dance. A murderously precise, dagger-sharp dance of hate. A hate dance. I envision him and Pauline Kael talking movies, then arguing movies, then leaping to their feet and hate-dancing movies.
What movies would you hate-dance at?
Pauline Kael is the kind of critic who doesn’t improve with the reader’s age. I worshipped her in my twenties but revisiting her in my forties was a sad experience which I now regret.
The Pauline Kael fact I recalled first is that she was a fearsome enough movie critic that the hulking skeleton-masked, violently brutal General Kael in the fantasy movie Willow was named after her. Apparently a bad review from her could have a real impact.
The problem with Pauline Kael is that she was too fucking pure. Too pure for the real world, which exists in shades of gray. She watched a movie, she gave her brutal, incisive opinion, she never looked back, just went on to the next movie. But I can’t help think people wouldn’t be as critical of her today if she were a man. I think they’d have seen him as heroic.
:nods: At the very least she would have been “idiosyncratic” instead of oh my God, listen to Robert Redford talk about what a horrible person she was.
post misfire, sorry!
I hadn’t heard of this movie before, but I guess it makes sense that Steve Martin got in a little practice at being awful before he made Shopgirl.
The auteur of the movie is probably not Martin but instead the bleak Brit playwright and TV scriptwriter Dennis Potter, whose original BBC version starred Bob Hoskins. Much of Potter’s vision still survives the glossification and condensation of the movie, although his mini-series was even darker.
Everything I’ve ever read about Astaire says he was a really sweet person, even when teasing Ginger Rogers about her infamous feather dress for years after Top Hat was made! He was extraordinarily driven and a perfectionist about his own dance and movies, but he was also super supportive of his coworkers.
He played a lot of sketchy 1930s dudes, that doesn’t mean he was one! Plus, if I ever feel sad, I watch his firecracker dance from Holiday Inn and feel better immediately.
I’ve never seen (or heard of!) a musical version of Pennies from Heaven, but the movie version with Jimmy Stewart is depressing as hell.
I love Pauline Kael so much that she basically forms my identity. Mallory, you have now outsourced your opinions of Pauline Kael to me, and you Looooooooooooove her!
Seriously, her writing on film is beautiful and strong and wise (even when I totally disagree with her). If you like movies from the 80’s try “state of the art”. It’s some her best writing about some of the most amazing films.
PS on an unrelated note you are CRUSHING IT as Dear Prudie.
Dance-off between him and Hiddleston, immediately!
Wow! The article review you linked to is ONE SICK BURN. I love it.
Dear Mallory, the Steve Martin P f H is a noble mistake. The original BBC mini-series starring Bob Hoskins is a work of art.