Duck Duck Strother
Pocket Money (1972)
directed by Stuart Rosenberg
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Cinefile
The breakout performance of this past week isn’t Alan Arkin’s impression of Kermit-voiced Texan Terrence Malick, as you’d expect, but the late, great Strother Martin sweet-talking Mr. Newman-O’s into a horse swap south of the border. I guess I first heard Martin the day I brought home a cassette copy of Use Your Illusion II from Target. “What we've got here,” he begins, as Slash and Izzy warm up behind him, “is failure to communicate.” In high school I watched Cool Hand Luke and put a pair of glasses and a hat to the voice; the movie didn’t make the impression on me that “Civil War” did.
Wouldn’t you know it, it took a second Malick-penned comedy to remind me that this funny, casually impatient shrub refusing to get Paul Newman and Lee Marvin the $500 he promised was the very same manic sidekick who played crazy to Lee Van Cleef’s straight man routine in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. And here brother Strother was again, finally in lights, admonishing his small-time schemers to just keep the noise down if they’ve got some sort of complaint to file. He’ll never be anonymous again.
As for Pocket Money, Paul Newman finally succeeds at suggesting, if not embodying, how you like to think of him in real life, playing dumb and drinking beers. But the director isn’t in on the joke, and his frames and his cuts never quite sync with the drifting conversations. Even so, manhandled as it is by an A-list crew, Malick’s screenplay is a great goodwill ambassador for sun-soaked movie getaways, much kinder to his legacy than he probably believes. Don’t forget the laughs that raised you.
directed by Stuart Rosenberg
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Cinefile
The breakout performance of this past week isn’t Alan Arkin’s impression of Kermit-voiced Texan Terrence Malick, as you’d expect, but the late, great Strother Martin sweet-talking Mr. Newman-O’s into a horse swap south of the border. I guess I first heard Martin the day I brought home a cassette copy of Use Your Illusion II from Target. “What we've got here,” he begins, as Slash and Izzy warm up behind him, “is failure to communicate.” In high school I watched Cool Hand Luke and put a pair of glasses and a hat to the voice; the movie didn’t make the impression on me that “Civil War” did.
Wouldn’t you know it, it took a second Malick-penned comedy to remind me that this funny, casually impatient shrub refusing to get Paul Newman and Lee Marvin the $500 he promised was the very same manic sidekick who played crazy to Lee Van Cleef’s straight man routine in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. And here brother Strother was again, finally in lights, admonishing his small-time schemers to just keep the noise down if they’ve got some sort of complaint to file. He’ll never be anonymous again.
As for Pocket Money, Paul Newman finally succeeds at suggesting, if not embodying, how you like to think of him in real life, playing dumb and drinking beers. But the director isn’t in on the joke, and his frames and his cuts never quite sync with the drifting conversations. Even so, manhandled as it is by an A-list crew, Malick’s screenplay is a great goodwill ambassador for sun-soaked movie getaways, much kinder to his legacy than he probably believes. Don’t forget the laughs that raised you.
posted by NPK at 7:58 PM
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