Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Pt. 2: Firing Squads and Flop Sweat

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of this Oscar-winning classic, Team Experience is revisiting the picture, tag team relay style. In Chapter 1, Nathaniel discussed our first look at George and Martha as they "welcomed" Nick and Honey into their home for a late night boozy marital bout. The first true bomb had just gone off when George realized that Martha had broken their "rules"... we rejoin the party now as George strikes back.

 Pt 2 by Daniel Crooke

My first wallop by Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was in my early years of high school after developing a formative penchant for emotionally explosive character dramas, iconic Hollywood movie stars, and Mike Nichols’ The Graduate. Once I learned of this film’s existence, I snatched up the first secondhand DVD I could find. It may have proved a bad role model; I shouted and scowled around the house for days, hunched in doorways with a clinking tumbler full of iced tea. The drama was just too magnificent to leave on the screen and, especially in this section, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton have so much fun spitting poison that their hysterical wickedness becomes infectious.

Through my green teenage lens of inexperience, I thought George and Martha should divorce immediately, move on with their lives, and leave this self-destructive cycle in the rear view. Jesus, can you imagine their Tinder profiles? Now that time and experience have obliterated my preconceptions of the idyllic American relationship, I can plainly see that they need one another to survive. They’ve got an arrangement in their marriage that – however revolting or sadomasochistic it may seem to the outsider – more or less works for them.

32:11 ....As long as they stay within the bounds. [More...]

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Complete the (Fishy) Sentence

Eager to see where you're at with this since you were so hushed about the review. Have at it in the comments.

Finding Dory is to Finding Nemo as _____ is to ________." 

(Don't feel the need to be too literal)

Judy by the Numbers: "Be A Clown"

Just as there are films that shine bright in a star's history, there are also films whose histories are controversial at best. The Pirate is an odd contradiction of a movie. As one of Judy Garland's most expensive films, it was also her first MGM bust. Released two years after childrearing had put Judy on hiatus, it was nonetheless stuck in preproduction for five years before that. While it landed Judy another hit song, the knockoff written four years later would become a classic. Though The Pirate was the loudest, brightest movie Judy had made to date, its most interesting sequences were left on the cutting room floor. What to do with The Pirate?

The Movie: The Pirate (1948, MGM) 
The Songwriter: Cole Porter
The Players: Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, The Nicholas Brothers, directed by Vincente Minnelli

The Story: The Pirate must have seemed cursed from the start. By the time Vincente Minnelli started filming, it had already been stuck in pre-production hell since 1943. This meant that even though Minnelli tried to keep costs down, enough money had already been sunk into it that the budget ballooned to almost $5 million. Judy wasn't helping either - she reported sick to work 99 times. Then there was the issue of reshoots. The song "Voodoo" apparently enraged Mayer so much that he ordered the nitrate negative burned. The ending was a mess and had to be reshot. Then that ending got the boot in the South because it featured black men tapdancing

All of these production problems took their toll, and the resulting movie is a little bit of a beautiful mess. Nonetheless, there are three reasons to see this movie:

1. It's the first A Movie appearance of the Nicholas Brothers
2. Vincente Minnelli makes really beautiful color movies
3. Judy Garland throws china like a red-haired Bucky Walters 

However, the scene that would make the film famous was "Be A Clown." As previously mentioned, it would become a modest hit for Judy, but the real hit came four years later when Judy's friend Donald O'Connor sang "Make 'Em Laugh" in Singin' in the Rain. Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed whipped up the song while trying to find a number for O'Connor. Luckily for them, Cole Porter was under MGM contract and wasn't feeling particularly litigious. While Judy would continue to sing the original throughout her career, ultimately Singin' in the Rain made Freed's version more popular. Even great talent couldn't keep The Pirate from sinking.

Best Shot(s): The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant (1972)

Hit Me With Your Best Shot
Season 7 Episode 16

The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant
Written and Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Cinematography by Michael Ballhaus 

When you watch a lot of movies you inadvertently end up drawing comparisons between films that you wouldn't have thought to put in conversation previously. It's as if you've accidentally become a guest programmer of a repertory theater or a local festival. Such was the case this week when I (not intentionally) watched Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966) and The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant (1972) nearly back to back and shook my fists to the heavens and cursed the name of anyone who ever regurgitated the lie that you have to "open up" stage plays to make them work on screen. 

Tears. not totally bitter yet but she's getting there.

Sometimes half the power of a text is in its site-specific constriction. So I went from George & Martha's messy drab campus housing with a bar (or at least its contents) in every room, to the stylish studio apartment of fashion designer Petra Von Kant which was paradoxically both over-decorated and minimalist, and both frozen in place and ever-shifting without explanation (Wasn't the bed over there in the last scene? Can these mannequins move around the room at will like the toys in Pixar movies?). I loved every second of both films and especially, perhaps paradoxically for someone who prefers short movies, the foreboding sense that there was no way to exit either film, ever, unless you accepted your fate and drowned in their contagious neuroses.

All it takes to make a play cinematic when it becomes a movie is great filmmakers. That's it. That's the whole formula...

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Linkspray

The Film Stage Kate Winslet will lead Woody Allen's next film which supposedly involves Coney Island
W Magazine gets Tom Hiddleston stripped down (not an unusual triumph of late: see High-Rise)
i09 even though Sterling Archer may or may not be dead (cliffhangers. argh) Archer has been renewed for 3 more seasons. Yay! 
Playbill Kristin Chenoweth is joining TV's next live musical, Hairspray in the Velma Von Tussle role (yup, the Debbie Harry / Michelle Pfeiffer part)  

Gothamist the Bryant Park outdoor movie series begins. If you watch this footage this is why I never go! I've been once and omg the claustrophia and noise and inability to enjoy the movie (full disclaimer: I also hate summer which might have contributed to my distaste for outdoor summer events)
Kickstarter Here's an oddity. Apparently Todd Haynes and Christine Vachon who have brought us so much eventful art cinema in the past 25 years made short films before the films we know and they're trying to find them and restore them
Guardian Sarah Polley will adapt Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace for a Netflix series
AV Club John Boyega joins Kathryn Bigelow's Detroit riots movie
Boy Culture does his annual review of Broadway Bares - so cool that Daniel Dae Kim did his bit for the cause!
Pajiba The Lego Movie predicted Donald Trump's current villany
Antagony & Ecstasy looooves Piper, the new Pixar short. It's true -- it's better than the feature that follows it. 

Superheroics and Hijinx
Tracking Board  glorious ginger viking Kristover Hivju, who devoted Film Experience readers know as a former nominee here for his perfect supporting work in Sweden's Force Majeure but who most of the world knows from Game of Thrones has joined the cast of Justice League
/Film a very long set visit report from Justice League. I know WB is trying to send the message that this will be fun but this sounds like a mess to me. Especially the part about Mother Boxes. I mean after Horcruxes and Infinity Stones who isn't sick of "collect these objects before the villain and win!" plots. SO DULL 
MNPP why did Zach Snyder make this cut from the Batman & Lois bath scene? 
Comics Alliance I wasn't aware that Tank Girl, a comic that once became a Lori Petty movie in the 90s, has been revived but it has. Tank Girl was always so cool looking. Still is
Coming Soon Wonder Woman herself, Lynda Carter, is joining the Supergirl TV show. Alas not as Wonder Woman but as POTUS. After all the fictional female presidents we've had over the years we better get a real one soon

Look.
It's the Looking movie trailer. Now I have to sob gay tears all over again that these beautiful characters will soon ascend to showbiz heaven never to be seen again. *sniffle*