What happens when you cross the characters in
Bringing Up Baby (1938) and the wackiness and chase scenes from
It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963)?
You get Barbara Streisand and Ryan O'Neal in the 1972 farce
What's Up Doc?
What was once old is made new again in this funny and familiar slapstick comedy about four identical plaid travel cases, the four people that own them and the various people trying to steal them. Put them all up in the same floor of a hotel room amidst a busy musical conference and you've got the ingredients for a humorous, fast-paced farce.
Let's compare
Baby,
Doc and
World...
Grant and HepburnIn the classic
Bringing Up Baby, directed by Howard Hawks, Cary Grant plays Dr. David Huxley, a bumbling paleontologist trying to receive grant money from a foundation created by a wealthy woman named Elizabeth Random. The straight-laced Huxley is engaged to the even more straight-laced and picky Alice Swallow. While trying to impress Ms. Random, Huxley encounters her niece, the fiery, fun and catastrophe-inducing Susan Vance, played by Katherine Hepburn, who tears his tuxedo coat upon first meeting him. The rest of his life descends into a maelstrom of one unfortunate event after another, unable to shake Ms. Vance from his life. Throw in two leopards, one tame, one wild, a missing dinosaur bone and a night in prison and you get the jist of
Baby.
Streisand and O'NealIn
What's Up Doc?, directed by Peter Bogdanovich, Ryan O'Neal plays Dr. Howard Bannister, a bumbling musicologist trying to receive grant money from a foundation created by a wealthy man named Frederick Larrabee. The straight-laced Bannister is engaged to the even more straight-laced and picky Eunice Burns (Madeline Kahn). While trying to impress Mr. Larrabee, Bannister encounters the fiery, fun and catastrophe-inducing Judy Maxwell, played by Barbara Streisand, who tears his coat jacket upon first meeting him. The rest of his life descends into a maelstrom of one unfortunate event after another, unable to shake Ms. Maxwell from his life. Throw in jewels, top-secret files, thugs, musical rocks, a hotel fire and a night in court and you get the jist of
Doc.
It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World
In
It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, a large group of characters engage in a high-speed car chase, careening and swerving through crowded city streets, wreaking havoc on by-standers in an attempt to acquire the contents of a buried briefcase of cash.
What's Up Doc?In
What's Up Doc?, a large group of characters engage in a high-speed car chase, careening and swerving through crowded city streets, in an attempt to acquire the contents of the four travel cases.
As mentioned before, at the end of
Bringing Up Baby, the group of characters end up in prison while at the end of
What's Up Doc?, the group of characters end up in court.
In
Baby, Grant succumbs to Hepburn's charm and they fall madly in love. In
Doc, O'Neal succumbs to Streisand's charm and they fall madly in love.
Even though
What's Up Doc? is not overly original, it is still very funny. Streisand's beauty and charm combined with O'Neal's hapless handsomeness, along with Kahn's hilarious take as the overly watchful fiancé make this film a great joy to watch.
It just goes to show you that, in filmdom, originality isn't as important as execution.
DC and Elizabeth all dolled up.
DC mugging for the camera.
Jeff and Merrill are now man and wife.
Sarah leads our efforts in the kitchen.
Black Snake Moan, which refers to a blues term about the darkest moment in love gone bad, stars Samuel L. Jackson as Lazarus and Christina Ricci as Rae, the lead characters in this inventive and entertaining story about broken hearts, damaged people and moving music. Jackson and Ricci are nothing short of stellar on the screen. And an additional nod should go to Justin Timberlake, who's recent acting work shows is a far greater talent than just a musician.
Written and directed by Craig Brewer, who also wrote and directed the critically acclaimed Memphis flick Hustle and Flow, again brings his deep history and passion of Memphis to the screen in a multi-layered film with deep, rich characters and an atmosphere that only a life-long resident of the area could bring.
Black Snake Moan is a film that works on so many personal levels it should touch everyone who gets a chance to see it.
Paul, last weekend, reading at Merrill's wedding.
Gabe working on the pumpkin.
The finished pumpkin at night.
Kids in costumes.
Well, after much thought, prayer and discussions with my daughter about plot, character and scope, I've finally started drafting out the feature script for The Adventures of Gabby Wells. Gabby Wells is a teen dramedy (drama/comedy) about our struggle with Christ-like selflessness. A young teen girl comes into possession of a watch that can stop time. The consequence to using the watch is every second she stops time is taken off of her own life.
Hidden Secrets is the most complete and entertaining Christian film I've seen. The script is witty and sharp, the cast is excellent and the production values on par with any other Hollywood offering.
The funny and charming John Schneider
The love triangle. Jeremy and Rachel (above)
Corin Nemec as the troubled Michael
During his journey is faced with many challenges and characters such as Evangelist, Hypocrisy, Ignorance and Faith. He must over come Demons and Great Despair on his quest to reach heaven.
Daniel Kruse as Christian
The book is excellent on so many levels. First, its very well written, complete with a Rebel with a Camera attitude and style. 
Third, Maschwitz gives step-by-step processes for making your own special effects. Included with the book is a DVD that includes his short film exemplifying his low-budget effects work along with tutorial examples, samples and freebies that we can use to help make our film high-quality production value.
The goal of the festival, put on in Orlando by a group called Christian Film Festivals at a cost of $60,000 for the two screens for the week, is not only to entertain existing Christians, but for Christians to return to the festival with people lost or looking for their faith again.
Anyway, Paul let Joan, his mother-in-law, read his copy. Apparently, she thought it was very funny and gave it to one of her daughters, Mary Jo. Mary Jo read it, liked it and gave it to her sister Pat. Pat read it, liked it and gave it to Mary Jo's daughter, Amy.
You get Barbara Streisand and Ryan O'Neal in the 1972 farce What's Up Doc?
Grant and Hepburn
Streisand and O'Neal
It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World
What's Up Doc?
The reimagination of the Western genre seems to be cropping up lately with the web series The West Side and Bluebox Limited's The Bride Wore Blood. Blood, co-written and co-directed by Bluebox's co-founders Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, follows the exploits of a modern day hired-gun- with-a-conscience, played effectively by Travis Shepherd.
The film clocks in at 60 minutes and is segmented into four "acts" which twist the story from one unexpected path to the next. All of the cinematic elements are top notch, from the music to the cinematography, to the acting to the directing. The writing is crisp and the camera movements create a wonderful, consistent style of the piece.
After the letdown with Her Summer, I am very excited to find Blood to be such an excellent piece of microcinema filmmaking.
On a side note, having immersed myself in the Bluebox world over the last week, I found myself feeling a strong sense of deja vu. Years ago I bought and watched multiple episodes of the Random Foo/Pangaea low-budget public access series called Fade to Black. Each episode in the series consisted of a number of short films from various genres.
Woods and Beck
I hope Beck and Woods continue to make movies. They're very talented guys. The Foo/Pangaea group has all but dissolved over the past three years. Jason Santo, of Pangaea, went on to create Mindscape Pictures, but has since stopped making movies. He got married and opened up a comic book store. C.C. Chapman and Dan Gorgone, of Random Foo, haven't made a new film in three years... they have children now and their priorities have shifted.
My hope for Beck and Woods is that they are able to make a living in cinema before the responsibility of marriage and fatherhood enter their lives. These guys have real talent and I'd hate to see their work diminish like so many other previous microcinema filmmakers.
The story behind the story is the police plot is based on actual events that occurred in Iowa and the script went through various incarnations trying to tell that story... first a heavy character drama, the second a silent ghost story film, the third a teen buddy film. In the end, Her Summer ends up trying to be two of those, but with very mixed results, with only one of them being successful.
Splicing together a sharp, well thought out ghost story with exposition about teen angst between two guys in a basement makes for a inconsistent approach and ultimately leads to confusion. As the film opens, I am immediately brought into the mystery behind the murders and the torment the police officer goes through the night he discovers their bodies.
I am then thrust into a conversation about a guy hemming and hawing about calling a girl he likes and asking her to a dance. I'm then brought back to the crime scene and unexplained, ghostly events. Then back to a conversation about Mountain Dew and the appropriate use of the term Dewski.
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