Word: manic
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...aggressively obsequious writers and producers. Any resemblance to Sid Caesar and Your Show of Shows is, of course, purely intentional, and in many other ways the film strives to capture the innocent heyday of live TV. My Favorite Year succeeds in this respect, but except for O'Toole's manic star turn, remains at heart a tepid movie...
...that tradition, as actor and writerdirector, in high-camp style. His first feature, Private Parts (1973), was a Psycho drama about a winsome lad who makes love to a lifesize, water-filled, clear plastic doll in the image of his beloved. In the mid-'70s Bartel made two manic car-chase movies, Death Race 2000 and Cannonball, whose plots inspired The Cannonball Run. For his presence in that film, Burt Reynolds was reportedly paid $5 million; for directing Death Race 2000, Bartel earned $5,000. Such are the rewards of B-plus moviemaking...
...star of this Mylar melodrama had her own seductive pathology, much of which came from her bloodlines. A bizarre brood, the Sedgwicks. Their money was so "old" it just seemed to grow wild, like weeds on a lawn, or like the manic-depressive strain that led to suicide for several members of the clan. Uncle Minturn, who kept watch over the Sedgwick gravesite in Stockbridge, Mass., insisted on cheap pine coffins for the family and would lie inside them to test their fit. Edie's father Francis, a golden boy at Harvard in the 1920s who turned to sculpting...
...been acting in sitcoms (The Andy Griffith Show, Happy Days) for most of his 28 years, should know more about shaping comic characters, situations and moods than he shows here. Winkler, the Fonz on Happy Days, is pleasantly put-upon here; Michael Keaton, also from TV, is mildly manic; and Shelley Long so resembles Pam Dawber in her squeaky cuteness that one wonders why the producers didn't raid Mork and Mindy for the real thing. Sitcom humor, like water and sex, is something that is more enjoyable when it is free...
...other housebreaker merits note. As a calf-eyed aspiring playwright with a manic giggle and an iron handshake, Nathan Lane is the kind of disciple who could drive a deity to drink. Doubling as director of Present Laughter, Scott favors a whirlwind pace and high-decibel delivery. Casting himself against type is a bonus. This is a Patton pistol-whipped by endless frustration. There is high glee in watching George C. Scott do a fast burn of impotent, unutterable rage. - By T.E. Kalem