Skip to main content

The Film List Project #7: Some Like It Hot

Fun Fact: I love fun facts. I love to include what I can in these posts. So, in an effort to keep you informed (and to entertain myself), I look up a few each week. While I was looking up fun facts this week on IMDb, I came across what may be one of my favorites ever: Some Like It Hot was not shown in Kansas upon its release because cross-dressing was dubbed, "too disturbing for Kansans".

Boy, am I glad I am not in Kansas ca. 1959.

I have to admit, I'm a little late to the Marilyn Monroe game. I saw Gentlemen Prefer Blondes when I was 15 and I loved it, but didn't really pursue her movies further.

It was a few months ago when I saw All About Eve (one of my very favorite movies now) that I said to myself, "People like Marilyn Monroe. Should I?"

So, in the last few months, I've watched a few of her films, a documentary about the last years of her life, and My Week With Marilyn, a 2011 film starring Michelle Williams as Marilyn during the making of The Prince and the Showgirl.

I get it now. Sometimes, an enigmatic star is worth nothing more than their legend, but Marilyn fascinates me. I think there's a huge reason why everyone feels so comfortable just calling her "Marilyn".

I didn't just watch this movie because of Marilyn Monroe, however. I had seen little clips from it here and there and was definitely intrigued, but I didn't have a way to watch it until this week.

This film is in a league of its own: brilliant and entertaining, hilarious and suspenseful. I firmly believe that it could be released today, and no one would bat an eye (that does NOT mean it should be remade. Please don't. Please.)

To me, this film is a really cool combination of the older Hollywood films and the new ones we'd see in the 1960s. The cast is irreplaceable. They bring glamor and humor and give the film its universal, timeless charm. It's very rare to be able to do that, though so many try. It definitely made me curious to see more Jack Lemmon films.

I'll end with this: Marilyn Monroe's contract stated that she'd only make pictures in color, and she disputed this film's being shot in black and white. The reason she finally agreed? The makeup they put on Lemmon and Tony Curtis tinted their skin green. Maybe, if the had made the movie in color, it would have been called Some Like It Wicked. See you next week.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Talking to Myself in the Mirror

I think it's a pretty safe bet that a lot of aspiring actors/writers/directors/filmy people practice their future Oscar speech in the mirror as kids. I did. Who am I kidding? I still do. It comes with the territory. My mirror talks go, ahem, went (who am I kidding? go) further. Sometimes, I do my makeup while talking to Barbara Walters. Other days, brushing my hair turns into a podcast interview. Most of the time, though, I rehearse what I'm going to say to my heroes. These hypothetical moments are incredibly important, and I can't afford to say anything stupid, so car rides, showers, and mornings getting ready are devoted to preparation. This probably makes me sound crazy. The word "narcissist" may also come to mind. I think one of my heroes would have appreciated both the crazy and the narcissism in this bit of oversharing, though, but we lost her this morning. One of my first posts on this blog was a tribute to Carrie Fisher. I read it over this afternoo

Cameron Crowe Ruined My Life

Believe me when I say that it pained me to type out the title to this post. Cameron Crowe is one of my very favorite filmmakers. To me, a guy who can write teenagers who are real people, really capture the full spectrum of human emotion, and incorporate a great soundtrack into his work is a real genius. Though it initially made me feel warm, fuzzy, and hopeful, a recent late night viewing of 2005's Elizabethtown  ended up making me a little nervous. I realized that Crowe was just like everybody else. Now, this probably doesn't make sense to those of you who admire his work. As a writer and filmmaker, Crowe definitely has a unique voice and vision that helps his work connect with all kinds of audiences. That's precisely the problem. Last week I wrote a post about how movies are only a reflection of life and not actually true to life itself. In the post, I mentioned that filmmakers are just one person with one perspective, and that is absolutely true of Crowe. In Crow

The Film List Project #2: MASH

Did you know MASH was a movie before it was a TV show? I didn't. Maybe that's a well-known fact. Maybe I'm very out of the loop. Anyway, I watched MASH this week. I'm just discovering Robert Altman, the director of the film. He made a movie in 1975 called Nashville , which I sort of felt obligated to watch since that's my hometown. I loved the film, especially because it had so many interesting characters mashed together. MASH  charmed me for the same reason. I've never been one for war films (this is set during the Korean War), but I was fascinated by the band of arrogant, witty surgeons in the film. It really didn't feel like a war film, to be honest. It felt like the Korean War was just where they happened to be. That feeling makes sense when you realize that these men and women are just trying to feel that way themselves. I don't have any personal experience with war, but I have read a few books about the subject, fiction and nonfiction, and