Word: beans
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...driver this morning gave her an "uh-huh" reaction when she said she was a model. The days are gone, clearly, when a model getting out of a New York taxi meant furs, a flash of great legs and a telltale hatbox. Clotilde's mufti is early L.L. Bean ? galluses, a checked shirt and baggy cords ? because it is easy and inconspicuous, unlikely to attract muggers in the scruffy neighborhoods where photographers' studios are often located. What Clotilde and most of the other successful models do a lot of is the misty, haunting Sears catalogue, and what they...
...accentuating the fragmentary nature of the dialogue. Stephen Rowe and Tony Shalhoub, as Joe and Wes, try mightily to keep things going, but with little success. Some awkward pace changes contribute to the difficulty, and the act sags until Frederick Neumann, as the John Huston-like director John Bean, takes things over. Neumann shines as the horny, hearty old American ("It's a simple name--I am a simple man.") whose vision of the revolution comprises mostly blood and tits; his prostrated plea for directorship of the film salvages the first act. Here, too, we learn the significance...
...SECOND ACT seems more like the play Wood wanted to write. Art fades into reality during the first day of filming (in Ireland, with 300 Irish extras as American and British soldiers), and chaos erupts. The film troops, sleeping in tents, are restless, and there is a rumor that Bean will use real bullets in the filming. The Cockney crew members, led by the gaffer, threaten a workers' revolt against Bean-cum-Washington, but they hold together to film the British charge up Bunker Hill--hilariously staged, dummies and all. But they can't hold out, and the turncoat...
...jolly good fun, with some wonderful parody of Bunker Hill and American moviedom. But there's a bitter edge beneath the verbal byplay, a sardonic vision reminiscent of Catch-22. If Wood disrupts the humor and flow with the prolonged dispute between the workers and Bean, it's because he has a point to make. War or moviemaking is nothing but a chaotic nightmare; and while some madman director-general barks orders from a crane, several hundred lowly paid extras, be they Irish soldiers in the British Army in 1775 or Irish extras in a British movie...
Mostly, though, Has "Washington" Legs? happily serves as a vehicle for Frederick Neumann as John Bean and for ART's Jeremy Geidt, as Sir Flute Parsons. Here is Neumann, wrapped in a cloak and his own stoic machismo, surveying the troops at night--"I am afraid, Joe," he says deeply, slowly--and then doubling over in agony when told he cannot have the final cut: "You have cut off my balls, Joe. My Balls!" Here is Geidt, prancing on tiptoes, delivering an hilarious monologue on what America means to him (mostly strapping young boys), and miming his way through Washington...