Word: mostellers
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...beings yearn to become rhinoceroses. The comfort of conformity becomes more attractive than the responsibilities of individualism. So one by one, the people of the town succumb to the lure of the mindless pact. Even Stanley's saccharine girl friend Daisy (Karen Black) and his best friend John (Zero Mostel) go over to the side of the rhinos. Only Stanley resists. He becomes the anomaly...
...film does have some funny scenes. Zero Mostel's characterization of a fastidious gentleman, slowly changing into a rhinoceros before our eyes, is wonderful. His extraordinary facial expressions and contortions transform him into a wild, snorting beast. He begins charging around his bedroom smashing furniture and eating plants. Unfortunately, though this transformation scene is funny, and Mostel is at his absurd best, the scene is just too long and gimmicky. O'Horgan's determination to make the play a conventional comedy ruins the scene. It's always fun to exploit Mostel's talent. But long comic scenes which rely...
...Zero Mostel re-creates his Broadway role of John, Stanley's friend and upstairs neighbor. Writing about the 1961 production, Critic Robert Brustein observed that "Mostel has a great dancer's control of movement, a great actor's control of voice, a great mime's control of facial expression." The film preserves Mostel's virtuoso performance, including a long, bumpy transformation from man into rhino. But the control that Brustein admired is not so apparent under O'Horgan's direction. Mostel, unchecked and unchallenged, easily skids into self-parody. Still, his billowing, bellowing...
BAKER LIBRARY The Producers, starring Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder...
...Producers, starring Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder, was almost titled Springtime for Hitler, after the musical within the movie. The real producers decided that just wouldn't sell. This very funny movie was the first film with Mostel and Wilder. Their most recent has Zero Mostel hilariously and violently turning into a rhinoceros. But he was so funny there that he helped turn Ionesco into a travesty and a sham. He's never quite so funny in The Producers, but Mel Brooks's film contains no pachyderms...