Word: squirm
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...recent movies impose on both mind and body. Back in the 1930s, when a double feature could sprint through the sprockets in 2½ hours, Columbia Pictures Mogul Harry Cohn announced that "I have a foolproof device for judging whether a picture is good or bad. If my fanny squirms, it's bad. If my fanny doesn't squirm, it's good." To which Screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz cracked, "Imagine-the whole world wired to Harry Conn's ass!" Oddly enough, Cohn deserves the last laugh; more than a few current films could benefit from...
That squalor, the play's major motive force, makes the production worth squirming for. Shepard's tools for inducing that Squirm aren't much subtler than the "starving class" metaphor of the title, which, despite numerous references in the dialogue, never surpasses the self-conscious (they're emotionally starving, you see). Emma (Molly White) the younger of the two gawky adolescents, is having her first period, as the mother constantly reminds father and brother to excuse her behavior. Wesley (Steven Gutwillig), her brother, urinates on a heap of Emma's painstakingly drawn posters. Shepard isn't one for the soft...
...study, conducted in conjunction with McHugh & Hoffman, a TV consulting firm, will not be released officially for a few weeks, but it is already making network executives squirm. The report is based on a poll of 1,500 viewers and follows up a similar study made six years ago. The responses, which come from all rungs on the socioeconomic ladder, indicate that TV is playing an increasingly less important role in people's lives...
...faces of the actors heighten their stylization, making them cartoon versions of themselves. These masks emphasize the actors' exaggerated facial expressions, making the comedy more visual. Omelet's jaw, dropped in surprise, hangs at chest level for two minutes or more; the nervous suitor and his bride-to-be squirm, choke and bite their nails as they try to make innoucuous conversation...
...from the public eye." Playing almost any character early in his career, Fonda seemed profoundly ill at ease. It amounted to a compact with the movie audience that he was one of them: callow, inarticulate, salt-of-the-earth, or if need be, soul-of-the-nation. This social squirm served him well, in comic or dramatic roles...