Sunday, October 20, 2013

Love means never having to say you're sorry

I still haven't seen "Love Story" which starred Ali McGraw and Ryan O'Neil. I saw the movie, "What's Up Doc?" with two of my cousins and my aunt the late Sister Marie Martin, as I mentioned in this blog post.

So I've finally re-watched WUD and I certainly appreciate it more now than I did when I was an adolescent. I thought Ryan O'Neal was an old man back then, but wow, I can see now what a hottie he was. Hell I think Austin Pendleton is adorable here - if that name rings a bell it's because he's been very active in the New York theater seen lately. And Kenneth Mars is funny as always - Mars you may know from the original movie version of The Producers, where he played Fritz Leibling, the author of "Springtime for Hitler." I had no idea who he was the first time around. It's great to see so many men with long hair - I sure miss the early 70s sometimes.

Also adorable is Madeline Kahn, as the put-upon fiancee of O'Neal's character.

And Barbra - what can you say about her? She has skin like buttah in this movie - and also she's very Bugs Bunny-esque, appropriately, with a hint of Groucho Marx and screwball-era Katherine Hepburn.

And Darren Stephens mother also shows up as an ur-cougar, resplendent in animal print and go-go boots when she first appears, and a bag full of priceless jewels, and in her last scene, with a cute security guard in tow.

The first time I saw "What's Up Doc?" the fact that the audience laughed uproariously at Streisand's final line: "love means never having to say you're sorry" stuck with me. I had no idea at the time why that was funny, but I knew it was a cultural reference that I just wasn't getting. And of course now I know that it was the catch phrase of the movie "Love Story." And it's very funny that O'Neal's response is "that's the dumbest thing I ever heard."

And it's great to see the streets of San Francisco in this movie - I hadn't been there the first time I saw WUD - and it's no joke, those streets are crazy steep - some of the residential areas have such steep hills it's hard just walking up them.