Written & Directed by Blake Edwards
With: Julie Andrews as Sally Miles, the star of Night Wind and the wife of film producer Felix Farmer, William Holden as Tim Culley, the director of Night Wind and Felix’s best friend, Richard Mulligan as Felix Farmer, the producer of Night Wind and the husband of Sally Miles, Robert Preston as Dr. Irving Finegarten…
Felix and Sally’s feelgood physician, Robert Webber as Ben Coogan, Sally’s press agent, Robert Vaughn as David Blackman, the president of Capitol Studios, Larry Hagman as Dick Benson, a Capitol studios executive and Blackman’s right-hand man, Marisa Berenson (huba huba) as Mavis, an actress and mistress to David Blackman, Stuart Margolin as Gary Murdock, Sally’s personal secretary and an aspiring producer and typical sleazy Hollywood leach…
Also, Loretta Swit as Polly Reed, a Hollywood gossip columnist (think Joyce Harber. You’re probably too young to remember), Craig Stevens as Willard Pratt, Polly Reed’s henpecked husband (Peter Gunn, henpecked?)…And finally, Shelley Winters as Eva Brown, Sally’s agent (think Sue Mengers. Google her), Robert Loggia as Herb Maskowitz, Sally’s lawyer, Jennifer Edwards as Lila (ex junkie), a young hitchhiker picked up by Culley, Rosanna Arquette as Babs, Lila’s friend, also picked up by Culley (appears topless)
[EDITOR’S NOTE: Get on with it!]
Let’s get something straight. These youngsters who claim they want to work on movies? That’s not what they want. If, IF, you can get a job, it means long hours, hard work, terrible working conditions, taking shit from morons, and being yelled at by people under a great deal of stress. In all likelihood the movie you work on will turn out to stink.
The ones seeking fame and fortune in Hollywood want a house in Malibu, a expensive car, tailored clothes, a seven-figure salary, and to party with the people your parents warned you about.
And actors, they’re the worst. Vain, childish and self-centered. What’s more, they don’t want to be actors! They want to be movie stars, or worse, sitcom stars (five years on a hit show, and they are set for life.) and screenwriters . . . Not writers. Writers write short stories, novels, plays, yes even movie reviews. Screenwriters want the big brass ring of their name up there on the silver screen, with no clue what it took to really get there. A three picture deal.
If, IF they can get some mouth breather semi-literate producer to read their script, after it passed through the gullet of a story analyst who dabbles in fiction with your screenplay as a jumping off point; he will likely want rewrites before he even promises to option your script. After so many changes you barely recognize your work, he may buy it and then want more changes to placate whatever nitwit movie star that becomes interested. Then, unbeknownst to you, your producer will farm out your work for a rewrite by some other “screenwriters” whose sum total of life experience comes from movies and TV shows.
If it ever goes into production you may or may not get paid. In any case, you will be ignored. You will deserve it for not choosing medical school. (not law school. Hollywood is lousy with lawyers who think a bar card makes them experts on movie production. Even if they don’t pass the bar exam.)
In S.O.B. A big-shot Hollywood producer named Felix Farmer has a turkey on his hands. Night Wind. El Flopo. In the clip we are allowed to see it is no surprise. It stars his wife with her goody-two-shoes image. Boring. And worse, pretentious. Freudian.
The slime bucket head of the studio is calling for his head. He decides to end it. Now, I am not in favor of producers and directors (and most screenwriters) take an early wrap from this veil of tears, but there should be some punishment for making bad movies and wasting my time. I mean, they get paid regardless, so some kind of punishment should be inflected. Say, a labor camp out there in Death Valley. Hard labor, with plenty of Gatorade for the heat of summer. Good simple food. Get those cocaine and single malt scotch toxins out of their bodies. Feel again. Think again. Get back those critical skills. Learn long division, because you can’t tell me they learned it in school, not in schools of the last 30 years. English grammar wouldn’t kill ’em.
Because Felix is at heart a screw-up, he screws it up. Lives. Then, something not so unusual for Hollywood, an unoriginal idea.
Anyway, without consulting his wife or his director, he decides to reshoot and add sex to Night Wind, specifically, showing his wife’s tits. Yeah, adolescent Dirty Johnny stuff.
Christallmighty.
All this is centered around a big party at his Malibu beach house, the sort of scenario Blake Edwards excels at.( Rosanna Arquette’s lookin’ good.) Throw in the usual cast of West Side Hollywood creeps and clowns to round out the mix.
Felix almost manages to get the movie he wants, his retooled vision (you know about the vision thing?), when the studio chief, played with cold comic aplomb by Robert Vaughn, figures a way to screw him, causing him to attempt theft of the finished negative from the lab where he is killed by a sympathetic security guard.
Now, there is a Hollywood story I choose to believe because at heart I am a creature of the movies. In fact, at times I feel I am in a movie. If my life is a movie, I would order reshoots and new scenes if possible.
(I cast Vincent D’Onofrio to play me in the theatrical version).
When the great actor John Barrymore died of drink, his body was liberated from the funeral home by his friends Errol Flynn, Raul Walsh and W.C. Fields, boozers to a man (if you do not recognize the above-mentioned names, I want to stop reading right now and forget what you have read. You are not movie lovers). They sat him in a chair, put a drink in front of his and had a final drinking party. Sniff.
The Director, the Doctor and the Press Agent in S.O.B. take the body of their friend Felix Farmer from the funeral home for one last party, ending with a Viking funeral. What a send-off. Sniff. Sniff.(Writer Blake Edwards must have heard the same story. He may have been at the party.)
However, the story here never really gels. But not bad enough to sentence Mr Edwards to the labor camp. It’s what he gets for having an axe to grind. A flop.
The actors performances are what save this movie from disaster, especial Robert Preston, William Holden and Robert Webber.
So you see, even the big shots can get screwed by Standard Operational Bullshit. Sometimes the bullshit is their own.
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