White Buffalo Day is a yearly honoring of my dear friend Beth's father. Sadly, he passed away a few years ago so every year on his birthday we try to watch a movie he'd enjoy and raise a glass to his memory. One of his all-time favorites was White Buffalo (released in 1977, staring Charles Bronson); thus the day was named. I know I watched this film with Beth and honestly it might have been the amount of alcohol we were drinking, but I don't remember much of it. I do remember it being long.
His birthday was last week, so this year we went for another favorite -
They Might Be Giants. Released in 1971.
Terrible, terrible tag line! I am certain no hearts were touched.
Beth has consented to be my Blogguest (not sure why this hasn't happened before since she shows up in this blog a lot but there you go), so here are our thoughts on this 70s masterpiece.
And by masterpiece, I mean a movie you probably have never heard of. I hadn't. Let me share the online synopsis with you to get the ball rolling:
After the death of his wife, wealthy retiree Justin Playfair (George C. Scott) creates a fantasy world for himself in which he is the legendary detective Sherlock Holmes, even dressing like the character. Out of concern for Justin's money more than his health, his brother Blevins puts him under the care of psychiatrist Dr. Mildred Watson (Joanne Woodward). As Dr. Watson grows fond of Justin, she begins to play along with his theories, eventually becoming an assistant in his investigations.
SUE: First of all, how did I not realize his brother's name was BLEVINS PLAYFAIR?? Poor kid. I'd be pissed at my brother with the normal name too.
BETH: My dad was a huge George C. Scott fan. The ONLY Christmas Carol adaptation allowed in the Masse household was the George C. Scott version.
He was also a huge Sherlock Holmes fan. I still have the two-volume "Complete Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle" anthology that he gave me ages ago. So he must have been SO excited when this movie came out, a marriage of the great actor and the great detective. We had a VHS copy of this movie that my dad would watch from time to time. I barely remembered the plot, so I must have "watched" this movie like I "watched" a lot of my dad's fave movies, meaning I was in the same room but with my nose buried in a book. My mother also had this movie-watching strategy. I don't recall how she felt about this movie in particular but a lot of my dad's film choices were met by eye-rolling in my family.
That's not to say he didn't pick some great stuff--my dad introduced me to South Park, Heathers, The X Files, Twin Peaks, They Live, Star Trek...but he was a quirky man, and his movie watching reflected that.
Wow, George C. Scott looked almost attractive in this movie! I mean, he was always distinguished looking in his movies, but he was also usually a bit portly and jowly. (Sorry George.) In contrast, they really made Joanne Woodward look plain. I guess an ATTRACTIVE female doctor in the 1970s was too much to believe.
It didn't help that they added a romantic storyline in all this, when Holmes and Watson had ZERO chemistry.
SUE: Agreed! Which was probably exacerbated by the fact that the script is kind of weak. I'm going to chalk this up to why it didn't do so well at the time. Don't get me wrong, they were both amazing actors and great in their respective roles...just no chemistry.
BETH: There's an uncomfortable scene where she invites him over to dinner--after he's made a point of noticing that she can't cook--and she spends what feels like hours poking at various bubbling pots on the stove, interspersed with shots of her getting into a white dress reminiscent of a wedding gown and trying (and failing) to put on false eyelashes (you should have heard the yelling in the room--"you have NO OTHER MAKE UP ON, but you're putting on false lashes? Without any eyelash glue?"). Obviously the whole thing is a complete failure and she almost sets the apartment on fire and she has to admit that she has failed at being a woman and the whole thing raised all of my feminist hackles. Um, you are a DOCTOR, which is awesome, so send out for some takeout and hire a house cleaner and don't worry so much about society's idea about what a real woman can do. But, it was a different era, I suppose.
SUE: And what was weird to me is that all of a sudden and without warning she changes her mind on how she behaves with him. First she's the doctor haranguing him to answer her psychological questions and then she loves him? There really isn't a moment when she's truly professional with him.
Both Holmes and Watson tell each other "I love you" at different points, but each time the statement is said with no emotion. More like a statement of fact. There is no physical affirmation of this love either. As my book club can attest, I'm not always a fan of this "subtlety" thing. If it's a book about the zombie apocalypse someone better goddamn get bitten. If it's a love story, someone better kiss.
BETH: The brother (BLEVINS!) is a one-note character almost not worth mentioning, even though he's the impetus for Watson and Holmes to get together. In the first scene where Blevins gets the blackmail money demand and then the whole family bursts in on him, he seems wholly unconcerned that his wife has come into the room where he's got an envelope containing a bunch of blackmail photographs of him with some other woman, which I thought was odd--I mean, don't you want to put that envelope under something? But then it becomes apparent that we aren't supposed to think too much of her intellect, which is further evidenced by her outfit--some sort of yellow fluffy maribou lingerie that makes her resemble a baby chick. Who just wears that around the house, during the day, with other people around? I said "That woman looks like a young Rue McClanahan" and then watched the whole rest of the movie without realizing that it WAS a young Rue McClanahan. She was pretty adorable, and nice to Holmes, so even though we as the audience are supposed to think she's dumb, I liked her.
SUE: Neither of us recognized her! In fact, I was thinking she was the Suffragette mother from Mary Poppins. Whoops. Sorry Glynis Johns.
Almost everyone in this is a character actor you'd recognize, though, even the guy who plays the hot dog vendor (Paul Benedict from Goodbye Girl and Spinal Tap!). An online reviewer wrote "One of the hidden pleasures of many lesser-known Seventies films is that they gave a bevy of New York's best character actors a day or two of work."
And on the subject of women in this film, this happened:
Holmes: Did you enjoy your first detective work?
Watson; No.
Holmes: Come on, I know girls. No means yes.
Oh no - he did NOT say that. Sigh. Fuck off, 70s.
BETH: So Holmes and Watson traipse around a very dirty 70s New York City and have adventures. A lot of it was very surreal, causing all of us to yell "What?" at various intervals.
SUE: One review speaks to how this film needed the audience to have the naïveté of audiences in the 40's - and this was in 1971. So you can imagine how disconnected it is now. Another wrote: "Whimsy-impaired audiences of the 70's probably said "Whaaa?" We are clearly a product of our whimsy-deficient times because we all certainly yelled "Wha?" plenty of times.
BETH: One of those encounters was at the telephone company; Holmes marches them right in some sort of service entrance and the two of them have bizarre interactions with the telephone operators, some random woman who's looking for some guy's address (but the operators won't talk to her unless she's on a phone, so she calls them from a phone in the same room), and then a security guard, all in the pursuit of some mythical clue that will lead them to imaginary arch-nemesis Moriarty. At first Watson is the straight-person, there to examine Holmes and take notes, but it really doesn't take that long before she embraces the crazy too. At one point they go to a movie theater and she loses a shoe (because the floor is so sticky? Ew) and my hypothesis was that she absorbed some crazy in the bottom of her foot, because she was never the same again after that shoe loss.
Then there is the ending of this film. Beth and I felt similarly about it.
BETH: Anyway, this all culminates in a parade of all the freaks from the entire film marching through New York.
SUE: I thought it was a Buckaroo Banzai moment near the end when they are all marching toward the perceived threat (which is the guy trying to get him committed and the brother?) (A reviewer called it Fellini-esque. Goes to show you how NOT highbrow I am. Ha.)
BETH: Then Holmes and Watson go (alone--the freaks just sort of disappear at one point) to the park to face off with "Moriarty", but really we just see a bright light on their faces and hear horses' hooves and...end movie. I guess it's up to our imagination what happens? It seems to me like we're supposed to think they died, but perhaps I'm just being macabre.
SUE: As stated above, there were several moments when I felt the need to verbalize "wha?" but mostly at the end. Holmes and Watson are staring into a tunnel, listening to the sound of horse hooves getting louder and louder and a light on their faces getting brighter and brighter. End scene. WHAT. THE. FUCK.
In my research, I found many who specifically wrote about said ending. One was trying to make me believe that by Dr Watson buying into Holmes' fantasy it is their love realized. I might have to call bullshit on this.
BETH: Sue turned to me after the movie and said, "Jim Masse was DEEP." and I had to agree with her.
**I'd like to point out that Beth's husband Todd would have been more featured in this blog except for the fact that he watched about 5 minutes of the movie, quickly moved to playing with his iPad, then eventually toppled over and fell asleep.
I only met Jim Masse once, but I've heard stories about him over the years that made me wish I had gotten to know him. I asked Beth to send me a favorite memory of her dad to include here so we all get a bit of him. Because he definitely was a character.
BETH: And finally, a memory (just one, but really, I had so many to choose from):
My father LOVED a good bargain. The first time I brought Todd home for a holiday (Thanksgiving? Christmas?), my dad suggested that we all take a late-afternoon/early evening drive to see snow on the nearby hills. We packed turkey sandwiches, drinks, etc., and did the "Masse driving tour" of said hills, which involved whizzing by them, stopping at one place to take photos, and then eventually ending up at what I realized was our REAL destination--a La-Z-boy store that was having a sale.
We wandered through the store and my dad started working on the salesman, asking about deals, etc. My dad picked out the couch he wanted, and then we all exited the store to go to the car and eat sandwiches while my dad decided his next move. Then we saw the door of the store open--the salesman came out of the store and began approaching our car.
My dad yelled, "DROP THE SANDWICHES! DROP THE SANDWICHES!", which is absolutely my favorite Jim Masse quote ever. Todd and I quickly stuffed our sandwiches back into their ziplock bags, but my mother was so startled she literally dropped her sandwich on the floor of the car, rendering it inedible. (I'm not sure why the salesman couldn't see us eating but apparently it wasn't a part of the narrative my father was crafting about this shopping trip for the salesman.)
My dad rolled down his window and the salesman told him about some deal he'd decided to give us on the couch. My dad told him he had to talk it over with my mom and that he'd come in and let him know what their decision was. After the salesman went back inside, my dad looked at my mom and instructed her, "OK, I'm going back in there, and no matter what I do, DON'T come inside the store after me. I might come to the door and wave you in, but DON'T come in." This was all part of my dad's ruse that my mother was the heavy in the family, and that my dad had to sweet talk her into buying this couch. I guess this was supposed to be a way for my dad to convince the store to offer us an even better deal, to appease the stingy wife?
My mother rolled her eyes and my dad went in the store. My family was used to having to "act" in order to help my dad finagle deals--once I had to pretend to be mad at my dad in order to get a deal from a Dell computer salesman--so really, my mom wasn't surprised.
Todd observed all this silently. (He still married me after this, so it wasn't enough of a warning sign, I guess.)
Thankfully, my mother didn't have to bust out her Oscar award-winning performance as "mean wife," because my dad was satisfied with whatever deal they offered him, so he just bought the couch, arranged to have it delivered, and came back out the car, smug. We went home and my mom finally got to eat. She still has that couch.
(Jim Masse drink pairing: I think would have to be a "Fuzzy Navel," a drink whose name amused my dad so much he had to go out and buy all the ingredients to make it as soon as he heard about it. I believe it involved peach schnapps and orange juice? I think he made just one and thought it was terrible (because it was). So, along with the couch, I believe my mother also still has that same bottle of peach schnapps.)
Happy birthday, Jim Masse, from all of us.
xoxo...hashtagSueslife
