Word: epical
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...there is a 'fat list,' perhaps even written down, that producers consult. You like to think you're hired strictly for your abilities, but I know my size has gotten me jobs." Among actors who might be on any producer's list: Orson Welles, an epic creator who is known to the television generation as the butt of Johnny Carson's fat jokes; William Conrad, TV's Nero Wolfe; Raymond Burr, old Ironside; and Burt Young, the Gibraltar of Rocky. Perhaps the most stereotyped of all is Victor Buono. Fat from childhood, Buono reached...
...while Cutter's off playing detective, the entire scene is filled with such delicacy--never in a film has there been a better exploration of unfaithfulness with all its anticlimactic manifestations--that it's clear Passer is something of a visionary. Or more importantly, he's a visionary without epic pretensions. Perhaps it's his intent all along to refuse the easy ending and the easy transition. Perhaps it is not so much inability to make a satisfying film, as it is that he wants to break the whole cycle of expectations the audience has had. Perhaps he's just...
...premise is familiar enough: A respected director loses all credibility after the failure of his latest multi-million dollar flick. And the film moves quickly at the beginning. After a brief segment from Felix Farmer's (Richard Mulligan) epic disaster, the camera turns to Felix himself. Staring at Variety catatonically as his wife leaves him, he decides to kill himself by inhaling the exhaust of his $80,000 Cadillac. Julie Andrews, as Sally Miles, Farmer's wife and the star of his films, plays herself. When told by her lawyers that she should not seek a divorce in the wake...
...FARMER begins reworking his epic from a Grating to an R, the film stands still. The specter of Julie Andrews baring her breasts on the Silver Screen can't keep a movie going for another hour. Focusing on a Farmer now independent of Hollywood, Edwards loses touch with the object of his satire. He resorts to silliness, the gimmicks that sustained Pink Panther films--destructive car chases, etc.--that are incongruous and pointless here...
...director dealt with another problem by persuading Plummer to play not only Henry but also the Chorus, who columniates the work with six arias that bridge the gaps in this epic tale and apologize for the shortcomings of the stage. More important, however, is the Chorus' role, not as the playwright's mouthpiece, but as the 16th-century public's general view of Henry. This popular consensus is far from identical with the man Shakespeare drew in the play proper, and the difference is undercut by having Henry describe himself. In fact, it would be so embarrassing for Henry...