KissMeStupid Tagged Articles at Cinematical
Credits Report: Kiss Me, Stupid
Filed under: Comedy », Fandom »
Here in Austin, the Billy Wilder movie Kiss Me, Stupid is playing tonight as part of a series about Wilder's later films, and I suspect I am driving people crazy, trying to convince them to see it with me. I may have scared a local filmmaker at a screening of Wilder's One, Two, Three a couple of weeks ago, urging the poor man -- whom I hardly know -- to return for this film.
Kiss Me, Stupid is often considered one of Wilder's worst films, a smutfest from 1964 that helped end the Production Code in Hollywood, a black-and-white comedy that is the opposite of the sophisticated sex comedies of the early 1960s (Doris Day and that crowd). It might have been a very different movie with its original lead actor, Peter Sellers, but he was ill and had to be replaced by Ray Walston. And yet there's something about this sex comedy that's appealing to me. The cast includes not only Walston but Dean Martin, Kim Novak and Felicia Farr.
The opening credits, which you can watch via YouTube after the jump, are the only part of Kiss Me, Stupid set outside the small town of Climax, Nevada. In Las Vegas, a celebrity crooner known only in the film as Dino (Dean Martin, natch) is performing his closing-night act before driving to Hollywood. It's a glitzy Vegas nightclub, with stereotypical leggy showgirls. I sometimes wish this scene had been shot in color, like an anti-Wizard of Oz. But the comedy style sets you up perfectly for the tone of this film. It's also fun to know that not only is the song that Dino sings in the credits a Gershwin tune ("'S Wonderful") but so are all the "bad" songs throughout the movie.
Cinematical Seven: Deliberately Offensive (But Fun) Comedies
Filed under: Comedy », Cinematical Seven »
"Are you okay?"
"I'm disgusted and repulsed and ... I can't look away."
--Clerks II
After watching Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay with me, my husband remarked, "That may be the most deliberately offensive film I've seen." However, he also pointed out that he'd been laughing his head off most of the time. My first thought was that if the Harold and Kumar sequel was the most offensive thing he'd seen in awhile, maybe he needed to go to QT Fest with me next time, or watch some of those bizarre midnight movies at Alamo Drafthouse. (And what, did he forget we saw Borat together last year?)
But afterwards, I started wondering ... how many intentionally offensive comedies have we seen and loved? I'm not thinking about provocative or transgressive films that try to make you stop and think about your life. I'm talking about movies that, when they succeed, evoke that amazing moment in which your jaw has plummeted to the floor in disbelief as a bubble of laughter starts to force its way out of you and will send you to the floor along with your dropped jaw, in hysteria. I'll put up with revolting, sacrilegious, and downright repellent content in a film if it makes me laugh hard enough. Can I think of seven movies that meet such a high standard for offensive comedy? It's more like seven times seven, and difficult to pick only a few of my favorites. Feel free to share any movies that you think I neglected to include -- bear in mind that in some cases, I simply didn't like the movie enough to get past the offensive bits (the Jackass films), or although I liked the movie, wasn't offended (The Aristocrats).
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