Something A Little Less Serious

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Today is the official release date of the new Criterion Blu-ray/DVD set of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, which means reviewers have all long since received theirs. So far, I see unanimous raves like this one and this one and this one. That means someone will try to draw attention to themselves and prove they have higher standards than everyone else by slamming it…but so what? Fans of this movie will be very, very happy. I'm told Amazon is already shipping sets so if you order one here, you can have your copy in a day or so.

On Stu's Show last week, Stu Shostak more or less challenged me to defend the film against its detractors. There are times when I feel like playing that game and times when I don't, and with this movie, I don't. As I've tried to make clear, a lot of my affection for it has to do with when I saw it and what it meant to my life. A lot of it is affection for the people on the screen and their style of comedy acting.

When folks say it's too long, I say, "No, no…you're missing the point. That's like saying a Where's Waldo? page is too cluttered." Part of what I love about this film is the length and breadth of its cast; how every time you turn around, there's someone else popping up. If you'd cut the running time in half, you would have cut half those people out. Contrary to the bromide, Less is not always More. More, on the other hand, is almost always More..and there are places where even Too Much is Not Enough.

Over the years, I've felt a powerful urge to "connect" with this movie and the people in it. As I explained on Stu's Show last week, I saw it while this nation was still in shock at the murder of John F. Kennedy. I was 11-and-a-half years old and on a night when my mind desperately needed a Change of Subject, there it was: A huge, all-star extravaganza with so many performers I loved from movies and television.

Kennedy was shot, as we all know, on November 22, 1963. That was a Friday. We got the news at Ralph Waldo Emerson Junior High School a little before 11 AM over the school public address system. Speaking was Mr. Campbell, the principal, and I was sitting in a Third Period Math class taught by Mr. Totman.

Mr. Totman was the kind of math teacher who'd find any excuse to talk about topics other than math so we spent the rest of the period discussing what we knew…which was, of course, nothing. Fourth Period was a lot of everyone looking at each other, wondering aloud what it all meant. Then at lunchtime, all over the school yard, you could see students assembling around anyone who had a transistor radio, listening to what little news was available. Bringing a radio to school was against the rules, and teachers — if they spotted one — were supposed to confiscate them. But that day, they weren't confiscating. They were crowding around them with everyone else, glad to have them around.

I had an idea. I ran over to the principal's office and suggested to Mr. Campbell that they pipe a radio newscast over the P.A. system. He thought that was a great suggestion and together, we tuned in the CBS news on his office radio and placed the P.A. microphone by its speaker. Later that day, students were told that if they wanted to go home early, that was okay. I walked home and stayed in front of the TV, as did my parents, all evening. In hindsight, I'm not exactly sure what we were waiting to hear but if forced to make a guess, I'd say we were hoping for anything that would make a lick of sense.

Saturday was more parking before the TV, waiting for something to be said — anything! — that might bring a little more reason and order to the world. "Bleak" is a good word to describe how everything seemed that day. It all seemed bleak. Then around 5:30, my father got a call from Ben Zukor, one of the folks I've described on this blog before as "our wealthy friends." The Zukors had tickets that evening for a special benefit screening of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World at the new Cinerama Dome in Hollywood. They were in no mood to laugh or even to budge from in front of the TV.

We, on the other hand, had a desperate need to not just keep staring at the news. So when Mr. Zukor offered us their tix, my father accepted. The film started at 8:00 and we had to scramble to shower, dress, drive to the Zukors to pick up the tickets, drive into Hollywood and then — and this was the hard part — find a place to park.

We got there with moments to spare and were directed to seats in the front row where, as we would soon find out, Jimmy Durante's nose was the size of Mothra. The seats were really Too Close for Cinerama and I believe the theater, which had then been open for a mere three weeks, later removed that row. That night, the closeness only added to how overpowering the entire experience was.

As I've probably said here (because I've been saying it everywhere), it's sad that you can only see this movie for the first time once. Much of the joy that night came because I didn't know who all was in it and what would happen…or even how long it would turn out to be. In the scene where Captain Culpepper (Spencer Tracy) tells the miscreants to go turn themselves in, I felt a tinge of letdown because, obviously, the movie was moments from being over. Little did I know! It had, like, twenty-three minutes left to run. There were still new stars to spot and more Southern California shooting locations to recognize.

And all around us, people were laughing and howling and enjoying themselves and not mentioning Dallas.

It was really a great, great evening even though when we got back to our TVs at home, President Kennedy was still dead and likely to remain that way. In the weeks that followed, I read everything I could find about the film and I began to pester its producer-director with questions.

Stanley Kramer's son Larry attended Emerson Junior High. He was in my class and he had the gym locker directly above mine. I gave him questions to pass on to his father, first verbally and then in writing. Then I gave him a letter to give to his father asking if I could take him to lunch and interview him.

Yes, you are understanding this correctly: An 11-year-old boy invited the great Stanley Kramer to lunch. What would I have done and where I would have taken him if he'd said yes?  I still have no idea but I never had to get one. He sent back a polite letter that said he was too busy and I should write to him again in six months. Six months later, I wrote and he sent back another polite letter that said he was too busy and I should write to him again in six months. Six months later, I wrote and he sent back yet another polite letter that said he was too busy and I should write to him again in six months.  I collected four or five more such letters in bi-annual exchanges before I got the message and stopped pestering him with them.

Over the years, I got to meet and/or work with many folks involved in the making of this movie. Just counting comedians in front of the camera, I worked with Sid Caesar, Buddy Hackett, Arnold Stang, Marvin Kaplan, Stan Freberg, Jerry Lewis, Don Knotts, Jesse White and Jonathan Winters. And I got to meet — in some cases, briefly — Milton Berle, Edie Adams, Jack Benny, Mickey Rooney, Phil Silvers, Barrie Chase, Peter Falk, Charles Lane, Carl Reiner and the 1963 configuration of the Three Stooges. But I never got to meet Stanley Kramer. Until…

In 1999 — I may be off by a year on that date — the comedian Chuck McCann and I drove out to the Motion Picture Country Hospital to visit a mutual friend, the brilliant comedy writer, Pat McCormick. Pat had suffered a stroke and an auto accident and between them, he was unable to speak for, as it turned out, the rest of his life. He could nod and giggle and make heartbreaking sounds in lieu of speech…but when you talked to him, you were never quite sure if he was understanding what you were saying. He was sharing a hospital room at that wonderful facility that serves the Hollywood community and there was a man on (not in) the other bed.  The bed was made and he was lying atop it wearing a jogging suit and sneakers.

He looked familiar and Chuck noticed me staring at him and came over.  He said, "Yeah, that's Stanley Kramer."

I looked at him lying there and  thought, "Hmm…he doesn't look busy now." And when an orderly brought him a meal on a tray, I thought, "…and I don't even have to take him out to lunch." I spent a little time with him that day and then went back two days later to spend the afternoon alone with both men.   Worthy of note is that Pat had a guest book and when you were there, he'd point at it repeatedly until you signed it. When I signed it on that second visit, I noticed the signature of someone who'd been there the day before: Buddy Hackett.  I later asked him about that and he said, "Yeah, I went to see Pat and who should I find in the next bed?  The director of the best movie I was ever in!"

So I finally got to interview the director of the best movie Buddy Hackett was ever in.

I believe that movie is a major reason I now do what I do for a living. This is largely why I don't want to engage in debate with someone who tells me it's too long, too overpopulated, too silly, too anything. I said to one detractor who craved mortal combat, "It may be a movie to you but it's magic to me." I am not here to tell you it's The Greatest Movie Ever Made or The Greatest Comedy or The Greatest Anything. At most, it was The Greatest Experience I Ever Had At A Movie…and watching it can still take me much of the way back to that evening.

I went into that movie the night of 11/23/63 feeling gloomy and disoriented by the world around me. "Bleak" is a good word to use again, this time to describe my mood before I first saw It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. It not only took my mind off the assassination when I needed it off but it gave me some sort of transfusion of Light and Funny and Silly.  And believe it or not, as ridiculous as so much of Mad World is, when I went home after seeing it, the world around me seemed a little less mad, even with my President dead.

Of course, the next day, someone shot the guy who made my President dead and things got mad again…not to mention bleak.  Despite what they tell you each year at the Academy Awards, movies don't really change the world.  But some of them sure make it easier to live in, mad as it is.