Hello, all --
For any Southern California fans, I'm passing along details about the
Cinematheque's tribute next month, which includes a double feauture of
SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE and HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WANDA JUNE. I'll be there, as
it's a great opportunity to see them on the really, really big
screen... Details below.
--Libby
* * * *
Wednesday, August 8 - 8:00 PM
Kurt Vonnegut Tribute Double Feature:
SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE
1972, Universal, 104 min.
Director George Roy Hill and screenwriter Stephen Geller (TV's "
Mission : Impossible") adapt Kurt Vonnegut's sardonic exploration of
the timeless madness of human existence, from wartime atrocity to
middle-class mediocrity to interplanetary euphoria. Middle-aged
optometrist, Billy Pilgrim (Michael Sacks), who survived the hellish
WWII firebombing of Dresden, simultaneously exists in the past as a
young POW in a German prison camp and in the far future as an elderly
resident in a zoo on the planet Tralfamadore (where he is memorably
pampered by Valerie Perrine as the libidinous starlet, Montana
Wildhack). With Rob Leibman, Sharon Gans, Holly Near, Perry King and
Eugene Roche. "Mr. Hill's achievement in SLAUGHTERHOUSE -FIVE is in
transferring to film...the author's ebullient senses of humor and chaos...
Second to THE GODFATHER, SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE is probably the most
perfectly cast film in months, mostly with actors who have had little
previous film experience..." - Vincent Canby, The New York Times
Rare! HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WANDA JUNE
1971, Sony Repertory, 105 min.
Director Mark Robson adapts Kurt Vonnegut's satiric play puncturing
arrogant Anglo Saxon machismo. After being lost for eight years in the
Amazonian rain forest and given up for dead, big white hunter Rod
Steiger returns home with his sidekick (and dropper of the Nagasaki A-
bomb), William Hickey (PRIZZI'S HONOR). But macho blowhard Steiger is
in for a surprise when he finds that his former-carhop wife (Susannah
York) is now highly educated and enamored of a gentle, pacifist doctor
(George Grizzard). Don Murray (BUS STOP) is yet another new fixture on
the scene, an over-eager vacuum cleaner salesman hoping to charm his
way into York 's heart. Pamelyn Ferdin is the couple's deceased
progeny, Wanda June, playing shuffleboard with Jesus in heaven.
Vonnegut's priceless verbal sparring ensues, with often hilariously
barbed results. "Rod Steiger shines as the self-deceiving ultra-
masculine hero, returned from eight years in the Amazon jungle, to
find that not only has his loving wife, a former pinheaded carhop
(played brilliantly by Susannah York), become a levelheaded
intellectual equal but has gone to his extreme opposite in seeking
another soul mate." - Variety NOT ON DVD
Egyptian Theatre
6712 Hollywood Blvd.
www.AmericanCinematheque.com
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