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Anthony Perkins and Martin Balsam 10 years after Psycho: Catch-22 (1970)

posted 3 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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I do believe that of the "Psycho five" (Perkins, Leigh, Balsam, Miles, Gavin) very few of them worked with each other after that classic.

Universal contract players Gavin and Miles did -- in "Back Street," one year later in 1961, which reminded us : they were Universal contract players.

Tony Perkins and Janet Leigh never worked together again -- a good thing.

But Tony Perkins and Martin Balsam ended up working together TWO more times:

Catch-22 1970
Murder on the Orient Express 1974

This Psycho fan found that catnip back then in those years -- after all, they were my favorite two characters and actors in Psycho(sorry, Janet, you were good in a different way) and here they were pitched together a couple more times.

Catch-22 is perhaps more pointedly examined because it came out almost exactly ten years after Psycho -- and also in a "zero" year: 1970 versus 1960 for Psycho.

I watched Catch-22 and read up on it the other day and gave some of my time to examining where Perkins and Balsam WERE 10 years after Psycho. It was revelatory.

First of all, both Catch-22 and Orient Express have alphabetical cast listings , so Martin Balsam went ahead of Perkins both times -- his credit lettering the same size AS Perkins (not so in Psycho, where Balsam has to share smaller type "co-starring Martin Balsam and John McIntire" credit.

Moreover, in Catch-22 after Alan Arkin gets the "star credit" before everybody else, we get this credit "Starring Martin Balsam" and nobody AFTER Balsam gets that word ("starring.") Thus, by default, Balsam was kinda sorta a star and kinda sort bigger than Anthony Perkins now.

Balsam plays one of the villains of Catch-22: Colonel Cathcart, who keeps raising the number of death-defying missions his men must fly , thus increasing the chances of death. The role was first offered to George C. Scott(who turned it down because it was too much like his role in Strangelove) and then cast with Stacy Keach who was fired by Mike Nichols as "too young for the role." Balsam was flown down to the isolated Guymas Mexico location post haste.

Balsam was 40 when he played Arbogast, and one realizes now that he probably would never look so good again. He was stocky but trim, with a round bald head but a handsome face(framed by huge black eyebrows -- eyebrows make the movie actor) Nattily attired in suit and hat, Balsam gave Arbogast a kind of precise air. He wasn't sloppy.

Balsam was 50 when he played Colonel Cathcart, and as it comes to many stocky men...weight in the belly started to show up. His head was still round but the face was a bit fleshy, the looks were still handsome enough, but..the years and food and gravity started taking their toll.

So Balsam made up for it (as Nicholson and Pacino would later when THEY aged) by playing up his deep resonant voice. As Cathcart, its a blaring, yelling, honking voice. Roger Ebert wrote "Martin Balsam overacts, but it may not be his fault." Perhaps director Mike Nichols fault?

As per the novel, Balsam is paired -- Tweedle-Dee/Tweedle Dum style -- with Buck Henry as Colonel Korn(Kernel Korn, get it?) and together they bedevil Alan Arkin as Yossarian and browbeat other unfortunates along the way.

Enter Anthony Perkins. I'm not sure he gets as much screen time as Balsam, but he's well cast as "Chaplain Tappman," a man of the cloth whom everyone calls "Father" even as he says that doesn't apply. He's the religious man trying to comfort men who are either in terror, alive but ripped apart, or dead...and its hard. And -- given the tone of this movie -- a little bit funny.

Anthony Perkins was about 28 when he made Psycho(27?) so he was about 38 (37?) when he made Catch-22. Against poor Martin Balsam at 50, Perkins still had a lot of boyish youth to him, and was still skinny as a rail( he would always be, sometimes TOO skinny.) The only noticeable difference from 1960 Norman is longer hair(in a 1970 WWII story) and the creeping-up beginning of that sing-song , rather fake line delivery he would perfect unto disaster in the Psycho sequels, a little bit worse each time. Its just STARTING here, not that bad yet, but noticeable.

Its 1970, so a famous scene between Perkins and Balsam in Catch 22 has Perkins coming in to speak to Colonel Cathcart(at Cathcart's request) and finding Cathcart barking commands...while sitting on the toilet. If Psycho in 1960 could show a toilet for the first time, Catch-22 in 1970 could show a man using it "that way." It is still a disconcerting bit...and Perkins plays it for all the embarrassment and flustered tics he can muster.

Perkins and Balsam had made Psycho for a great director of long standing(47 films or so by then.) Perkins and Balsam made Catch-22 for a great director of short standing(2 films, but doozies -- Virginia Woolf and The Graduate.) For this, both actors could be grateful I suppose -- "masters" of then and now wanted to hire them.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Actually, Nichols was rather "saving" Perkins' film career a bit in 1970. After Psycho in 1960, its as if American studios didn't know what to do with him. Perkins went to Europe to play love stories against older women(Melina Mecouri, Ingrid Bergman), played a "bad guy" in a rather unthrilling thriller with Sophia Loren ("Five Miles to Midnight"), and made a US movie called The Fool Killer which wasn't released for a few years, and then went nowhere.

In 1968, Perkins had a critical hit in "Pretty Poison" where his nut is far less nutty than Tuesday Weld's nut - SHE kills people (including her Mother); Perkins just watches. It put Perkins back on the map in American critical circles , but to little effect. Catch--22 saved him.

Meanwhile, even though he refused to ever talk about Psycho, Martin Balsam seems to have parlayed that biggie into a great character guy career in the 60's. He went right into Breakfast at Tiffany's(1961) and was in noteable films like Seven Days in May, The Bedford Incident, and Hombre. He won an Oscar for A Thousand Clowns(1965) where he has less screen time than in Psycho, and is less interesting than as Arbogast. But he gets a big speech at the end -- and he was awarded.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Perkins in 1970 rated going above the title with Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward in the woeful political drama "WUSA", while Balsam got a juicy supporting role in "Little Big Man"(as a con man who loses body parts as the movie goes along, but never dies.) Perkins did his first TV movie in 1970(How Awful About Allen) and it WAS awful. I believe that Balsam started taking TV movies around this time, too. It proved a living for both men.

But here they are -- together -- and facing each other, and talking to each other in Catch 22, ten years older , ten years farther in their Hollywood careers(Perkins wasn't even nominated for Psycho, and here's Balsam with an Oscar) and...

...and this is the key: not nearly as interesting or unforgettable or exciting. Hitchcock posing the two men in a very basic "motel porch and motel office" set got more intensity and humor and perfect line readings -- in a perfect, low key Hitchcockian tone -- than Mike Nichols could come close to...and I suppose Nichols WAS to blame for Balsam yelling his every line and Perkins over-doing the tics(he was NEVER that tic-ridden as 1960 Norman.)

There come brief moments in the film when Perkins talks to Balsam and...just for a few seconds...you can HEAR Norman and Arbogast. Their voices are quieter, their acting more believable and...it must have been a little sad for them to feel it "coming back" and then losing it.

Catch-22 DOES prove that actors can be different people. One doesn't really THINK about Norman and Arbogast here; these are different characters. (Its the same -- and even better -- to realize that as Alan Arkin shares scenes with Perkins, we've got two of the greatest movie psychos of all time in the same frame -- Harry Roat Jr from Wait Until Dark and Norman Bates from Psycho -- and yet, we really don't think about Roat at all with Arkin and only think a little about Norman with Perkins.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

The 10 years from 1960 to 1970 brought the R rating, and the "modest" breakthroughs of Psycho here go "all the way" :

The toilet(as mentioned.)

Gore: Catch 22 has a famous "funny-gory" scene in which a man on a raft on the ocean -- standing up -- is cut in half by a plane propeller...while his head and torso fall overboard...his legs remain standing for a moment before falling down.

Gore: The whole movie keeps re-visiting a flashback of a wounded airman who eventually and literally spills his guts out on Arkin.

Nudity: Glimpses of a naked body double in Psycho here become a "full frontal" shot of a totally naked Paula Prentiss, with a body that has both 1970 and(I assume) 1944 "reality" to things(no razor used.) Its funny though: Prentiss, one of the sexiest women on screen in the 60's here in total nudity is presented without any eroticism at all. She's at a distance, small in the frame. But still. And her husband, Richard Benjamin , is in the cast and, I think, in the scene watching her? (Its Yossarian's dream, in real life, she won't let him touch her -- a knee to the groin enforces the policy.)

Nudity: Somewhat more erotic presentations of nude/topless Italian ladies of the evening.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

I see MASH, rather than Catch-22, as the 1970 version of Psycho in terms of "screen breakthroughs." That military black comedy has nudity and blood(in the operating room) and profanity and sexuality but...in less quantity than in Catch 22 and in a more light and breezy way -- even amidst all the gore. No wonder MASH hit first and hit bigger than Catch-22.

While Catch-22 stopped Mike Nichols' streak cold after 2 movies in 1970, time has been kinder to it . Just as Psycho is an artifact of 61 years ago, Catch-22 is an artifact of 51 years ago -- the ten years between them was meaningful(the R rating came)...but together they both seem like movies from long, long ago. Almost like dreams of another, better time...no matter how bloody.

And Mr. Perkins and Mr. Balsam are long gone now.

[–] swanstep (2616) 3 years ago

I see MASH, rather than Catch-22, as the 1970 version of Psycho in terms of "screen breakthroughs."

There's a movie out there from 1970 that's come up before that you *need* to see ecarle: The Conformist. It has all of Catch-22's 'looks like a million bucks' scale, has a very broad use of flashbacks and free-associative edits just the way Catch-22 does, and even shares a period ('30s and early '40s) and location, ending in Rome in 1943 as Italian fascism collapses. But whereas Catch-22 lumbers and meanders episodically and is anchored by one very simple idea - military life even in an unusually just and necessary war is pervasively insane and Yossarian is the one sane man in that kingdom of the insane - The Conformist has a whole raft of ideas and all its showoffy stuff feels in service of taking you places you've never been before cinematically or story-wise. It is and was a true Citizen Kane/Sunset Blvd/Psycho-level breakthrough in my view. MASH, on the other hand, I don't rate at all I'm afraid, with its pitiful football ending (obviously shot on-the-cheap in Los Angeles) being a particular sticking point for me. I really like lots of Altman's films but a few of his traditional biggies including MASH and Nashville are kind of 7.5/10 movies for me and so don't make my best of lists for their respective years.

Anyhow, your thoughts about Catch-22 have got me rewatching that film this time with Soderbergh and Nichols himself providing commentary. I'll post some more when I've finished that commentated rewatch.

[–] swanstep (2616) 3 years ago

Y'know, listening to Nichols and Soderburgh's commentary (which used to be up on youtube, whence I grabbed it, and it may still be up there somewhere) really rubs one's nose in the impressive set-construction and shot-construction of C-22. E.g. 1. Almost all location shots were timed by the DP to be shot at specific times of day so subsequent takes tended to have to be done always "the next day". E.g. 2. They constructed the runways they used in Mexico - which are still there - as well as full buildings out of stone that were destroyed for the big base attack scene late in the film. E.g. 3. The mass plane take-off scenes *were* incredibly dangerous, and crashes were very nearly caused by all the overlapping wakes and vortices. An AD fell out of a plane and died during the production but, really, it's almost a miracle that there wasn't a *huge* mass casualty take-off disaster while filming. How differently Nichols career would have gone if that had happened? I'm kind of interested to see the Clooney Catch-22 mini-series now. I assume that they did most of *their* plane work with CGI - would be interesting to see how that looked.

For what it's worth I have a youtube playlist (which I haven't updated in years) with about 100 commentaries on it. Not C-22's tho':
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxyYxI-hs0bAlKv-VbFuofU98tM-FihQx

Note: Balsam's toilet scene is not in the book and was a Nichols invention. Elizabeth Taylor had told Nichols that when she was first at MGM (at age 12-13!) Louis B. Mayer would ask to see her in his office and would sometimes greet her on the can (Allegedly he did this not just to budding starlets but to a range of people he wanted to.... intimidate?). Anyhow, Nichols repurposed Taylor's crazy story for the film. Hollywood, huh? Soder. quips in response 'Producers these days are so boring!' The commentary was for a 2001 dvd I believe; I doubt whether Soder. would wisecrack like that today.

[–] swanstep (2616) 3 years ago

Ha! About an hour in to the commentary, Nichols breaks down and just says, 'This really wasn't and isn't my kind of movie. It's not about interpersonal things...there is no subtext, no underneath, no things people don't say'. And 'Arkin hated the film, hated his performance and almost all the other performances for that reason too'.'

Nichols later adds that as soon as they started doing previews he knew that the film wasn't really connecting (and suspected that the necessarily more distanced, more cerebral, less emotional material was to blame). He'd of course been spoilt by Virginia Woolf and The Graduate, both of which had had produced monumental, blow-the-doors-off audience reactions in Previews.

Nichols also remarks that his real mistake (he claims made out of ignorance) with the movie was spending $20 million in 1969 ($146 million in 2021 money!) to make it. He says that the film would have been better and been better received *if* it was made for much less and was pitched from the start as a niche movie.

[–] swanstep (2616) 3 years ago

I'm kind of interested to see the Clooney Catch-22 mini-series now.

I've binged Catch 22 (2019) now... and it's...interesting. 6 x 45 min eps = 4.5 hours to play with. Overall the approach is more realist/less absurdist (e.g., Milo never trades away fliers' parachutes), more serious/less comic/doesn't attempt to live up to the Groucho-esque image of Catch-22, more conventionally emotional (lots of score) and more conventionally balanced (Yossarian comes off as more an outright coward and also as a sabotaging, gets-lot-of-his-buddies killed jerk. In some of the biggest changes from the book and film, Yossarian ends the mini-series back doing bombing missions albeit in the nude. This point seems to me to be a bit of compensation for in many other ways making Y. to be more of a dangerous jerk than in the film. Further steps of compensatory heroism for Y.: he comes up with a scheme (which doesn't work) to go on lots and lots of bombing missions to get through his quota more quickly and finish his tour commitments before Cathcart notices; after failing to drop his bomb Y. alone suggests and insists that the plane go around another time. That action leads Y. to get decorated and promoted for destroying a bridge on the second go around, but Nately is killed on that second run rather than as in the film having him die in Milo's contracted bombing of the home base). In sum, Y. finally ends up somwhat conventionally brave and accommodated with the military in C-22 2019 leading directly to the indignant accusation that 'It's not C-22'.

[–] swanstep (2616) 3 years ago

Y in C-22 2019 is younger and hotter than in C-22 1970 and he has an affair with his commanding officer's (George's Clooney's) insanely young and gorgeous wife [Update: The actress was in fact 43-44 - she looked half that to me!?]. It's *this* that finally means that Y. can't go home! Whereas in the movie it's Y's principles about not being a flunkie state-side for the military that keeps him from taking Cathcart's deal to go home, in the mini-series it's General Clooney's revenge against Y. for bedding his wife that blocks the flunkie deal that Cathcart works out with Y.. I'm really not sure what to make of that change.

Well, I could go on, but in a binge watch I may have missed a few things (maybe more) so I'd need to rewatch the whole damn thing to be sure of any more pointed criticisms, and I'm not prepared to do that.

The mini-series *is* fascinating because it so thoroughly reverses the key aesthetic choices of the movie. It's at least a 6.5-7/10 on its own merits I'd say. It looks good (CGI planes etc. are good enough), acting's good, some underlying beats and dialogue, evidently straight from the novel are unkillable and still work. But the tone is muddled, the perspective on Y. himself feels slippery, there's a lot of flab in opening and closing eps especially (bad places to kill momentum)... I don't see how anyone could give the series more than a 7.5/10 overall. Worth a look if, like me, you're wedded to C-22 somehow, but it's not essential viewing at all.

[–] swanstep (2616) 3 years ago

Final note bringing us full circle: There's no equivalent of C-22 1970's Balsam/Perkins scene in C-22 2019 (and there's no toilet scene period - less absurdity/comedy generally remember). The chaplain character in C-22 2019 in fact barely registers. In some ways, this vindicates Nichols's basic strategy of casting well-known actors. We know Perkins and the camera loves him and that means that he can make quite an impression with relatively few lines. 2019's Chaplain probably has slightly more screentime than Perkins and even has most of the same lines, albeit spread out over a lot more time, but makes no impact. He's another fairly interchangeable in a large cast.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

There's a movie out there from 1970 that's come up before that you *need* to see ecarle: The Conformist.

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In the "open years" that lie ahead of me at this later stage in life, I've got two goals: reading some great novels and seeing more classic FOREIGN films. "Mainstream man" here really got his history from Hollywood studio films, and the more "modern"(hah) Hollywood of the 60's and 70s. But I was always READING about foreign films, and I read about The Conformist. Did it not inspire The Godfather at least in a visual sense?

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It has all of Catch-22's 'looks like a million bucks' scale, has a very broad use of flashbacks and free-associative edits just the way Catch-22 does, and even shares a period ('30s and early '40s) and location, ending in Rome in 1943 as Italian fascism collapses.

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The "Italian" aspects of WWII always seem to be "rich" for movies. Something about the country itself, I suppose, and the Fellini-esque aspects(as in Catch 22) and ...the women?(I'm serious.)

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But whereas Catch-22 lumbers and meanders episodically and is anchored by one very simple idea - military life even in an unusually just and necessary war is pervasively insane and Yossarian is the one sane man in that kingdom of the insane - The Conformist has a whole raft of ideas and all its showoffy stuff feels in service of taking you places you've never been before cinematically or story-wise.

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Catch-22 might well have been "surrounded on all sides" in 1970 by works that stole its thunder. MASH in its way; Patton in its way...and here, The Conformist on the "foreign" side (with the shared Italy aspects.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

whereas Catch-22 lumbers and meanders episodically and is anchored by one very simple idea - military life even in an unusually just and necessary war is pervasively insane and Yossarian is the one sane man in that kingdom of the insane - T
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I would like to linger on that aspect of Catch-22 for a moment. For here, deep in the Vietnam era, was a movie which made the point that, indeed, "even in an unusually just and necessary war"...military life is pervasively insane.

"Objectively," I trust many of us believe that WWII was a war that HAD to be fought(much like the American Civil War) to stop truly heinous behavior and (with the Nazis) the potential for worldwide conquest. Movies like Schindler's List and Diary of Anne Frank "make the case" for WWII.

But that didn't make WWII any EASIER for the men who fought it -- death and gore and brutality and killing had to be undertaken even for a "good cause," and Catch-22 makes the point that "the bureaucracy will take over wherever it can" and so will greed(Milo Minderbinder, selling parachutes for linen and cutting a deal with Germany to bomb his own base...)

Yossarian makes a point that (I believe) wars have usually included this promise to the fighting man: you only have to do SO MUCH TIME, and then when your mission is over, if you survive, you get to go home and somebody else comes in to do HIS tour of duty. But Cathcart makes sure that Yossarian never gets to go home, that he(and the others in his unit) always have MORE missions to fly.

I think someone said that "MASH is an anti-war movie, and Catch-22 is an anti-military movie." Maybe. Colonel Blake in the MOVIE MASH was a cooler commander than Colonel Cathcart.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

The Conformist is and was a true Citizen Kane/Sunset Blvd/Psycho-level breakthrough in my view.

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Fair enough. I'll offer the (weak?) counter that MASH was, I believe, a pretty big hit, and (like Psycho) a big, unexpected hit on a small budget. (Catch-22 performed well in theaters too, but could never recover its cost. This was also true for Hello Dolly and Paint Your Wagon the year before.)

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MASH, on the other hand, I don't rate at all I'm afraid

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I daresay we've not agreed on more than two or three movies all the time we've conversed, swanstep but...we are civil the rest of the time. See? It can be done.

I'll favor MASH with the briefly referenced point that it is a great PERSONAL memory(that I've gotten into before so I'll stop here) and I'll add that these favorites were too: American Graffiti, LA Confidential, Love Actually...even Chicago. Something BEYOND the commercial/artistic value of the films...something personal to me. When I saw it, who I saw it with, what was going on in my life at the time. (Actually I honor Chicago in 2002 not only because I like it, but because a very elderly male relative I was close to...went and saw that damn movie like five times in the same year. He liked the ladies. And he didn't last much longer.)

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with its pitiful football ending (obviously shot on-the-cheap in Los Angeles)being a particular sticking point for me

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I dunno, the whole MOVIE seemed shot on the cheap in LA, once you know its all on the Fox Malibu ranch -- which I did NOT know as a young person seeing it, I imagined it was in Korea. Hah.

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. I really like lots of Altman's films but a few of his traditional biggies including MASH and Nashville are kind of 7.5/10 movies for me and so don't make my best of lists for their respective years.

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I believe that MASH was Altman's only truly big hit(early on, it made him) and Nashville did OK but not nearly as well as expected(Pauline Kael seemed to think it would do better than Jaws the same summer.)

I return to MASH as MY "1970 Psycho" if only for how it "defined the R rating for a new decade" and shook things up "at the American movie theater" like Psycho did.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

MASH is also clearly an episodic movie...I rank it in the same place(and way) as Dr. Strangelove, Animal House, and The Wolf of Wall Street that way. Each scene plays as a "comedy mini-movie" and could be separated from the rest of the movie and play practically alone. Note too that these are "guy movies," which probably says something, too. (Hey, if the world can have chick flicks, it can have guy movies...and everything in between.)

Meanwhile, Nichols' Catch-22 is ALSO episodic, but the episodes tend to feel either straining too much for laughs, or too much for trauma.

One comedy scene that ALMOST works is when General Orson Welles demands for his va-va-voom bombshell female aide, "Would someone give this woman a CHAIR?" and suddenly all the flyboys run at her with metal chairs and surround her with a mountain of them and most of them fall to the floor and then she picks one. Its at once a "modern" Woody Allenish bit and harkens back to slapstick. But it plays a bit "forced."

More forced still (sadly) is a re-staged bit from the book in which "Major Major Major"(Bob Newhart) tells his aide (Norman Fell) that for people who come looking for him, "If I'm here, I'm not here...if I'm not here, I'm here...and then you can let them in." What was witty and weird on the page plays pretty damn unfunny here...even with master deadpanners Newhart and Fell.

The whole MOVIE is like that...scenes from Heller's "great American war novel" falling flat and NEW improv scenes falling flat...interspersed with some gore, some sex, and some serious "over arty moments."

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

On that last point...Nichols had the Best Director Oscar Hitchcock never got(for The Graduate, two films out), a blockbuster(The Graduate), a huge "auteur" reputation, a million dollars to DIRECT Catch-22 , and that two page Life photo spread where he is front and center and the cast are in the distance behind him(less Arkin, who is nonetheless smaller in the frame.)

And thus, one can feel Catch-22 in its opening minutes to be STRAINING for "great importance"-- the long sunrise over the isolated base; the huge mass of REAL aircraft(indeed) lifting off in beautiful, dangerous masses. Nichols rather overplayed his "auteur" hand here...and paid a price.

But its not just that. He had some interesting actors(Perkins) some funny actors(Newhart) and ...barely gave them enough scenes to register. You WANT to see more of the funny guys BEING funny and..no dice. I think my favorite of the group -- woefully underused -- is Richard Benjamin, with his arch-funny vocals (he seems cheery and smarmy at the same time.) Though I have great admiration for Jon Voight's gleefully capitalistic and opportunistic Milo Minderbinder.

Anyway, Catch 22 -- perhaps doomed by "trying to film the great American novel" goes on that long list of movies where the production was superb, the cast was some of the best in the business, and...it didn't exactly fail so much as ...just sit there.

Nichols then saved himself with Carnal Knowledge, but followed THAT with two bigger flops -- The Day of the Dolphin(historically, the movie Polanski was prepping when Sharon Tate was killed)and The Fortune(Nicholson and Beatty wasted) . Nichols went out of movies for 7 years, came back with Silkwood -- and never really used that arty-arch style of the movies from The Graduate through Carnal Knowledge again.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Side-bar from the book about Nichols: Stacy Keach was fired as Colonel Cathcart and remarked of the rest of the cast: "They would sit around doing bits to make Mike laugh. He digs that sort of thing. But I couldn't make that scene." Classic "cool cat" talk -- but that WAS the rep of the Catch-22 group -- kind of "New York café society in Mexico."

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Note: Balsam's toilet scene is not in the book and was a Nichols invention.

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Hmmm. I read the book around the time the movie came out; all these years later, I can't remember what got in and (mostly) what didn't.

I do remember a funny bit in the book about "The Man Who Sees Everything Twice!" but it didn't make it into the movie. Into the mini-series, maybe?

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Elizabeth Taylor had told Nichols that when she was first at MGM (at age 12-13!) Louis B. Mayer would ask to see her in his office and would sometimes greet her on the can (Allegedly he did this not just to budding starlets but to a range of people he wanted to.... intimidate?). Anyhow, Nichols repurposed Taylor's crazy story for the film. Hollywood, huh?

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Ha. That's specific and explanatory. I think some critics also thought it tracked with how President LBJ intimidated aides while on the toilet. But now we know the REAL deal...

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Soder. quips in response 'Producers these days are so boring!' The commentary was for a 2001 dvd I believe; I doubt whether Soder. would wisecrack like that today

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Harvey. And now -- with no sexual accusations at all yet -- Scott Rudin(just for general meanness -- actionable? Maybe.).

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

The mini-series *is* fascinating because it so thoroughly reverses the key aesthetic choices of the movie.

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Sounds like it. The change to WHY Yossarian doesn't get to escape at the end(now about Clooney's wife?) sounds rather puny. Was that in the book? I can't remember.

But then Clooney mucked up a TV remake of "Fail Safe" years ago...he doesn't exactly have the "professional touch" of his forebears(directing? producing?)

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It's at least a 6.5-7/10 on its own merits I'd say. It looks good (CGI planes etc. are good enough), acting's good, some underlying beats and dialogue, evidently straight from the novel are unkillable and still work. But the tone is muddled, the perspective on Y. himself feels slippery, there's a lot of flab in opening and closing eps especially (bad places to kill momentum)... I don't see how anyone could give the series more than a 7.5/10 overall. Worth a look if, like me, you're wedded to C-22 somehow, but it's not essential viewing at all.

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I remember skimming the cast list when it first hit -- light on identifiable stars. Clooney. Hugh Laurie. And Kyle Chandler as COL CATHCART? (Chandler is quite the handsome man; aged now but still younger and fitter looking than Balsam.) Not many more identifiable stars.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Final note bringing us full circle: There's no equivalent of C-22 1970's Balsam/Perkins scene in C-22 2019 (and there's no toilet scene period - less absurdity/comedy generally remember).

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Hmm. Well, it WAS a weird scene even in 1970. It makes its point and then er...lingers too long.

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The chaplain character in C-22 2019 in fact barely registers. In some ways, this vindicates Nichols's basic strategy of casting well-known actors. We know Perkins and the camera loves him

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The camera really DID love Perkins, didn't it? In the years before Psycho, in Psycho itself(his beauty manifests most, weirdly enough, in his scene with Balsam) and for a darn long time(decades) before age and tiredness and a certain frailty took over.

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and that means that he can make quite an impression with relatively few lines. 2019's Chaplain probably has slightly more screentime than Perkins and even has most of the same lines, albeit spread out over a lot more time, but makes no impact. He's another fairly interchangeable in a large cast.

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Yes. I mean -- more power to these young unknown actors if they make it -- but it looks like Clooney's C-22 was cast out of TV shows I don't watch.

Meanwhile, Nichols had Arkin (newly hot from Wait Until Dark); Perkins, Benjamin(newly hot from Goodbye Columbus), Newhart, the sexy Prentiss(how that geeky guy Richard Benjamin won her, I'll never know -- charm?)
and Orson freaking Welles. Plus, the quiet one from Simon and Garfunkel.

(I forgot, in noting Tony Perkins post Psycho career, that he did The Trial for Welles in 1962. Evidently Perkins bonded with Welles on the C-22 set even as everybody else was exasperated by his blowhard sabotaging presence(poor guy.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Note in passing: Janet Leigh and Tony Perkins shared the honor of working for both Hitchcock and Welles. And Welles didn't direct that much. Perkins told someone that his greatest honor was working for WELLES. Hmm..I've seen The Trial...its very arty, rather incoherent and Perkins is very JUMPY. (And the production kept running out of money.) But...OK. Welles was more effusive than Hitchcock...and an actor a lot of the time, like Perkins.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Days later,

I remembered a couple of things with some Psycho relevance:

I recall a Life magazine article about the making of Catch-22 and how all the actors were bored out of their minds at the isolated Mexico desert-by-the sea location.

Tony Perkins, the article said, took to amusing his co-stars by re-staging the staircase scene in Psycho. What the article did NOT say was that Martin Balsam was in the cast, too -- but I expect Perkins and Balsam did something together. Which would be ironic: in the actual movie, Balsam was attacked by one, maybe two stunt doubles. Perkins never had to actually PERFORM his murder scenes.

Also, I forgot that Orson Welles is in Catch-22. With that great voice of his and stylish delivery, he actually delivers the comedy goods. But evidently Nichols and the cast hated Welles for his overbearing "I could direct this, too" ways on the set.

But: all the actors evidently hated Welles except: Tony Perkins. Perkins and Welles were fast friends from having made Welles' The Trial together. They hung out a lot on the Catch-22 set. And Peter Bogdanovich in another article said that "Perkins was most proud of having worked in an Orson Welles movie." Sorry Hitch -- but The Trial isn't as good as Psycho, so you've got that going for you, which is nice.

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AND: John Wayne was making a Western in Mexico not far from the Catch-22 location. Wayne flew in to party with Nichols and the cast and -- no one met him at the airstrip, nobody met with him at all. Political protest. There is a quote in the new Nichols book by the now-late Nichols where he says he felt bad ever after for mistreating Wayne that day but...I don't much believe it.

[–] swanstep (2616) 3 years ago

There is a quote in the new Nichols book by the now-late Nichols where he says he felt bad ever after for mistreating Wayne that day but...I don't much believe it.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Nichols tells this same story to Soderbergh during their commentary track for Catch-22 on dvd. Nichols *sounds* sincere, i.e., that he really does regret that he allowed his youthful self-righteousness to take over and cause him to be rude to Wayne. Wayne was generous to Nichols later/did not hold a grudge which also made Nichols cringe and feel ashamed.

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Hmm...well...better information. I will say that when I first READ this quote, I took it as a real apology or regret. Then I read it again and thought..."is he being snarky?"

Not so, evidently.

But how could John Wayne have thought that any of the New York actors making Catch-22 would want to hang with him? Orson Welles, maybe(not really an Elaine's type), but Welles wasn't on location very long.

I suppose it WAS incumbent at least on director Mike Nichols to greet Wayne and have a drink with him. Nichols was "Mr. Million Dollar Paycheck" at the time, but about to have a run of flops and about to lose any of HIS John Wayne level stardom for a few years. Humility might have done him good.

Here's a funny vision on the Catch-22 location: Anthony Perkins meeting John Wayne. Can't SEE that. Plus I think Wayne nursed a grudge that while he got no Best Director nom for The Alamo in 1960...Hitchcock got one for Psycho.

---Rang true to me. I suspect that most of us have an episode or two where our youthful self-certainty led us to do *something* that ever after makes us cringe

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That's true. We have to age a bit to find a more centered self.