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OLLI: Spring 2018: Hollywood North: weeks 3 & 4

week 3: AMERICAN GRAFFITI (1973), directed by George Lucas; with Richard Dreyfuss, Ron Howard, Paul LeMat, Charles Martin Smith, Cindy Williams, Candy Clark, Mackenzie Phillips, Wolfman Jack, Harrison Ford, Bo Hopkins, Terence McGovern, Kathleen Quinlan.

From The Movie Guide: "A hallmark film of the 1970s. In a series of touching and telling vignettes, AMERICAN GRAFFITI follows a memorable crew of small-town teenagers through one momentous night in 1962. Director Lucas' modest, near-verite approach contrasts strikingly with his glitzy following film, STAR WARS. ... "Based on George Lucas' own teenage hot-rodding days in Modesto, California [and filmed in Sonoma County, California], the appeal of AMERICAN GRAFFITI is in its fragmentary scenes; the nervous camera jumps from character to character to present a powerful collage of American youth on the brink of maturity and the complex experiences of the coming decade. The enormous financial and critical success of GRAFFITI --- it grossed over $100 million domestically --- allowed Lucas the freedom to finance one of the most beloved and highest-grossing films of all time --- STAR WARS --- and spawned numerous imitations, even inspiring the long-running sit-com, 'Happy Days.' The film boosted the careers of a host of young performers, including Dreyfuss, Howard, Williams, LeMat, Smith, Clark, Phillips, Harrison, Ford, Kathleen Quinlan, and Suzanne Somers." AMERICAN GRAFFITI was nominated for five Oscars: Best Picture, Director, Supporting Actress (Clark), Adapted Screenplay (Lucas, Gloria Katz, Willard Huyck) and Editing (Verna Fields, Marcia Lucas).

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week 4: SMILE (1975), directed by Michael Ritchie; with Bruce Dern, Barbara Feldon, Michael Kidd, Geoffrey Lewis, Nicholas Pryor, Joan Prather, Denise Nickerson, Melanie Griffith, Annette O'Toole, Maria O'Brien, Colleen Camp, Caroline Williams, Kate Sarchet, Dick McGarvin, William Traylor, Tito Vandis, Dennis Dugan, Eric Shea, George Skaff. SMILE was filmed on location in and around Santa Rosa, with the pageant held at Veteran's Memorial Auditorium.

From The Movie Guide: "Director Ritchie does a fine job handling a huge cast, with many first-timers, in this satirical glimpse of a real beauty pageant staged in Santa Rosa, California. The original script, written by TV veteran [Jerry] Belson, supplies plenty of laughs, but the picture has so many characters we never get to truly know any of them, and the result, while often hilarious, is ultimately skin-deep, just as the beauty contestants are. Dern is a mobile home dealer in the town and the chief judge of the contest. His son, Eric Shea, is a pre-teener with an eye toward female flesh and money so he takes some surreptitious shots of the nude beauties and means to sell them to his pals. When that's discovered, father and son have to see a court-ordered psychiatrist, George Skaff, to allow the boy to go back to school. Kidd is a tired choreographer who has received this second-rate assignment and hopes it might lead to a rekindling of his flagging career. The president of the beauty pageant is Lewis, and the prudish female chief of the proceedings is Feldon, who is married to Pryor and is as cold as an Arctic night to him. Cutting between all of the people and the many contestants, Ritchie tries to give us a picture like NASHVILLE with multiple stories going at the same time. The final scenes were staged at the actual pageant, and no one, except Belson and Ritchie, knew the winner, so the conclusion seems realistic. The best of the beauty contestants is Prather, who has to alter her character from naive waif to win-at-any-cost contestant. ... In 1986 a stage musical based on the movie was being financed, with music by Marvin Hamlisch. The music for SMILE was based on Charles Chaplin's original song 'Smile,' which became a hit for Nat 'King' Cole. [Daniel] Osborn's incidental music was appropriate, and some pop tunes by Neil Sedaka, Shirley and Lee, and the Beach Boys were also used. Like many of Ritchie's films, it was sharp but not good-natured, and people stayed away from it in droves. Most of the beauty contest participants were exactly that, and it's a tribute to Ritchie's ability with actors that he gets them to come off as nonactors, which is one of the most difficult things an actor can do." Roger Ebert, in his review of the film, said "Smile does a good job of working over the hypocrisy and sexism of a typical beauty pageant."