BRIGHT BULB SCREENINGS, Free Double Features Every Second Thursday of the Month
Follow Bright Bulb Screenings on Facebook, Instagram
Thursday August 10th, 7pm, FREE ADMISSION!
Two Rare & Outrageous 1970s Comedies!
TAKING OFF (1971, directed by Milos Forman, 93 min., U.S.)
FIRE SALE (1977, directed by Alan Arkin, 88 min., U.S.)
Follow Bright Bulb Screenings on Facebook, Instagram
Thursday August 10th, 7pm, FREE ADMISSION!
Two Rare & Outrageous 1970s Comedies!
TAKING OFF (1971, directed by Milos Forman, 93 min., U.S.)
FIRE SALE (1977, directed by Alan Arkin, 88 min., U.S.)
In the 1960s, director Milos Forman was a leading light of “The Czech New Wave,” the most successful director from a rich Czech film culture that flourished in the era just before the Soviet domination of 1968's 'Prague Spring.' Forman made three films in Czechoslovakia between 1964 and 1967 that won international acclaim, BLACK PETER about an awkward teen store detective, LOVES OF A BLOND about a shy young woman who pursues a touring musician after a one-night stand and the Oscar-nominated FIREMAN'S BALL, a satire of a small town festival that narrowly skirted being banned by Communist authorities.
Despite Forman's troubles with the Czech Communist Party, he was given permission to move to New York City to prepare for his first film made in the States. All of Forman's films are subtle comedies of manners, and setting out he thought he would have to take time and get to know everyday Americans. With fellow Czech director Ivan Passer, he rented a place in Greenwich Village with an open-door policy, talking to many young people who fled their families to live in NYC. On weekends, he would go to the fountain in Central Park with photographer Mary Ellen Mark to look for faces for his film. Together with playwright John Guare (who would go on to write the hit SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION) they crafted a screenplay poking fun of 'the generation gap' between kids and their parents.
TAKING OFF follows a suburban dad who ventures into the counter-culture to look for his missing teenage daughter. He runs across everything he fears out there, yet finds himself just as prey to its lure as the younger generation. The comedically-game cast includes Buck Henry (screenwriter of THE GRADUATE), Lynn Carlin (a discovery of John Cassavetes from his 1968 improvisational opus FACES), Audra Lindley (Mrs Roper from THREE'S COMPANY), Paul Benedict (neighbor “Bentley” from THE JEFFERSONS), Georgia Engel (later of THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW) and young Linnea Heacock in her first and only role, The film also features a live performance from Ike & Tina Turner and as a running Greek choir, the film periodically returns to a musical audition where a string of young women singers (including a pre-fame Carly Simon and the actress Kathy Bates) sing out the zeitgeist of the times.
Released by Universal Studios, TAKING OFF won the Grand Prix at the 1971 Cannes Film festival and while TAKING OFF received great reviews, it failed to find an audience in the U.S. (Forman joked, “I owed Universal 500 dollars by the end.”) Refusing to return to Czechoslovakia, this led to a few years of struggle for Forman, only ending when he was hired by producer Michael Douglas to direct ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST, partially because his services were available for cheap. CUCKOO'S NEST would sweep the 1976 Academy Awards, including earning Forman the first of two directing Oscars. This would lead to a long career of great success, though Forman would never return to his own original stories again, instead becoming a successful adapter of plays and literature.
Despite the success of RAGTIME, HAIR, AMADEUS and THE PEOPLE VS LARRY FLINT, TAKING OFF remains the only of his 12 features to remain unavailable in the U.S. the home video market. Although the film has rarely screened, TAKING OFF has maintained a storied reputation among film buffs over the decades. Here's a rare chance to catch this unique (and very funny) document of that tumultuous moment in U.S. history, a time that may have parallels to our own.
“A delightfully touching comedy...Never taking sides, but allowing both factions engaged in the generation gap war plenty of space and generosity, its gentle wit has aged far more gracefully than the hectoring sermons of most youth movies churned out in the late '60s and early '70s.”
- Time Out Guide
- Time Out Guide
- - - - -
Out of circulation for years, 1977's frantic farce FIRE SALE was Alan Arkin's second and last film as a director,
Vincent Gardenia is the patriarch who helms the family's failing department store. Wanting to retire and move to Florida with his batty wife (Kay Medford) he convinces his shell-shocked WW2 vet brother-in-law (Sid Ceasar, playing the role in an electric wheelchair) that his store is actually a Nazi bunker and that he should burn the place down. Off to Florida, Gardenia leaves his hapless son in charge (Rob Reiner, in what is one of his biggest film roles) who secretly cashes in the store's fire insurance premium to invest in updated stock for the store. Arkin himself plays the prodigal son, a failing high school basketball each who returns home to beg for $3000 to adopt a 16 year old basketball wiz and stifle his wife's demand for a child. Pandemonium (including high-speed wheelchair chases) ensue.
Key to tuning in to this comedy's outrageous tone is to know it was written and adapted for the screen by novelist/screenwriter/director Robert Klane. Klane had previous success in adapting his own novel for 1970's WHERE'S POPPA, starring George Segal and HAROLD & MAUDE's Ruth Gordon as his impossible mother, which became a major cult hit of the “midnight movie” era. FIRE SALE carries many of that film's qualities, with poisonous family relationships, casual surreal asides and an anxious atmosphere of disaster looming at every minute.
Labeled a “misfire” in its original release, FIRE SALE stays true to its own loopy logic and is artfully constructed for the often unwieldly genre of broad, antic comedy. Like WHERE'S POPPA, Klane shows an America that is spinning out of control with normal people inexorably finding themselves forced into hysterically terrible decisions.
Klane would never achieve the critical cache that he had after WHERE'S POPPA's success, but his touch is recognizable through a body of American comedies he scripted, including THANK GOD IT'S FRIDAY (which he also directed), the Dudley Moore remake of Preston Surges' UNFAITHFULLY YOURS, the Tom Hanks vehicle THE MAN WITH ONE RED SHOE (also a remake), NATIONAL LAMPOON'S EUROPEAN VACATION, Howie Mandel's WALK LIKE A MAN and WEEKEND AT BERNIES, to which he later wrote & directed the sequel. Klane is an overlooked figure in film comedy and FIRE SALE is among his finest hours.
“The absurdity has its moments but you'll need a strong stomach for some of its sick jokes.”
- The Sydney Morning Hereld, 1977
- The Sydney Morning Hereld, 1977