A Movie Scene Quiz

I can't start a new question at the moment, either -- I have to finish something at work in the half hour remaining before I leave the office. (Besides, it takes me almost 30 minutes to put on all the clothes I wear when I go outside in this weather, so I should start doing that soon.)

Next question is open.

That was a toughie.

I don't have time to ask one right now.

Take it away- anyone.

Hey, guys, check it out! I'm an Enthusiast! At last!

Well, it's the weekend, and I'm swamped with some last minute items. Going to see Caroline or Change next week, bree-so I'll be able to let you know how that is!

Tonight I'm going to see a one man show that got good reviews called Italian. Queer. Dangerous. that's supposed to be fun and interesting. I sure hope so--it has to be good to keep me awake on a Friday night!

Probably will check in to see if anyone can Stump the Stars as I just did!
Buon weekend! (yea, I know there's fini di settimana in Italian, but everyone seemed to say weekend!)

Congrats on "flying up" to Enthusiast, lois -- I always knew you had it in you!

I've got a new question, but I don't know how much I'll be online this weekend -- so if anyone comes back and wants to play, and gets frustrated that I'm not around to field guesses promptly, just put it aside.

Bookstore clerk
Real-life writer
Reporter
Teenage killer

I'll play for awhile tonight.
I was just thinking that for a change of pace sometime we could give a clue for a movie or actor, i.e.

first line in a song from movie musical:

Seems that the sun was shining on the lea

or :

Departed in a gust, for a title of movie.

Or this actor was in: Sugar Uprising

Just something to think about if you get bored with this game.

But not now. Now I want to guess your question.

And, what is ENTHUSIAST?

I like your change of pace suggestions. I think one reason why this game has lasted so long is that it keeps evolving, so it never gets stagnant.

An "Enthusiast" is what an A2Ker becomes on the way to being a "Seasoned Member" (like me) or a "Veteran Member" (like you and mac). I have to say, though, that "Seasoned Member" has always struck me as kind of an odd term -- it makes me think of one of those recipes that say, "Season to taste" (which always seems singularly unhelpful).

Oh, I thought "Enthusiast" was an organization of some sort.
That's funny. But, I'm not so sure I like being a veteran. I don't want to fade away.

Kate Winslett

Bookstore clerk - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Real-life writer - Iris

Reporter - The Life of David Gale

Teenage killer - Heavenly Creatures

And you never shall! (fade away)

Yes to Kate Winslet, and you got all the movies. I thought that would be harder. I considered using her role in Quills, in which she played a laundress, but I didn't want to give any clues as to her gender, and I thought that saying "laundry worker" would be cheating.

Now it's your turn to take the game in whatever direction you choose. I'm off to bed -- I'll check in tomorrow to see what you decide.

I'll leave the question open now. My eyelids are drooping.

The ice was in fine condition for skating today, but it was too darn cold. Glad to hear that you've been "overdressing". (lol)

Hopefully we'll have warmer weather tomorrow.

Yesterday I watched a movie in which this actor played a real-life composer. I'm almost certain I have used him in a question before, but I can't find him on my list, so:

1. He played a real-life composer
2. He had a role in "Sugar Uprising"
3. He played a real-life artist

I think it's Jose Ferrer, and I think we have used him before, but there's no law against that.

1. He played a real-life composer (Sigmund Romberg) in "Deep in My Heart".
2. He had a role in "Sugar Uprising" (better known as "The Caine Mutiny").
3. He played a real-life artist (Toulouse-Lautrec) in "Moulin Rouge" (the 1952 version).

This morning I watched a TV interview with Estelle Parsons, who's playing Maude (the Ruth Gordon role) in a new stage musical version of "Harold and Maude" at the Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey. (An aside: the Paper Mill was where I saw my first musicals. I sang in our church choir, and every year, as a treat, the choir members were taken to see a show -- usually starring Betsy Palmer, who was doing a lot of regional theater in those days -- at the Paper Mill.) Anyway, when the interviewer asked Estelle Parsons what her future plans, at age 77, were, she said that when she walked into the Paper Mill, she saw a big picture of "Joe Ferrer" (as she called him) on the wall, and remembered that he was "whacking away at things" right up to the end of his life, and she said that's what she intends to do.

Yes to Jose Ferrer. And yes, now I remember using "too loose" in a clue.

I love your little story. Do you remember all of the plays you saw? (Betsy Palmer is also 77.) And Harold and Maude as a musical! Oh, I'd love to hear the music from that. (I loved Ruth Gordon in the movie.) I wonder who will play Harold. Please let us know if you hear anything more about the musical. I remember, after seeing Ferrer's Cyrano, borrowing a script of the play from the library and typing certain passages in order that I might memorize them.

Can you still recite those passages from memory?

The only musical I'm positive (or almost positive) I saw Betsy Palmer in at the Paper Mill Playhouse is "Annie Get Your Gun". Everything else is lost in the mists of time. I should do some internet research on shows that played at the Paper Mill from the late 1950's to the late 1960's, and see if anything rings a bell. (Wait a minute -- was that a Freudian slip -- could "Bells Are Ringing" have been one of them?)

It doesn't look good for "Harold & Maude"'s chances of moving to Broadway -- the New York Times gave it a not very good review, which I'll paste in below:

THEATER REVIEW; Youth, Age and Love Now in a Songful Fix

By CHARLES ISHERWOOD
Published: January 11, 2005

Everyone loves something about ''Harold & Maude,'' the touchstone 1971 movie about a cockeyed May-December romance, decked out with anti-authoritarian trimmings.
If Maude's earth-sprite aphorisms, occasionally overindulged by the screenwriter Colin Higgins, rub you the wrong way, the crisp visual wit of the director Hal Ashby's compositions will set you up.


If Cat Stevens's folky odes to self-empowerment, scattered like pixie dust across the soundtrack, aren't your bag, surely the priceless Vivian Pickles is. (Ms. Pickles, otherwise obscure, is the angular British actress cast as Harold's glacially self-absorbed mother. It's late in the day, I know, but can I hereby found the Vivian Pickles fan club?)

The binding element in the movie's singular recipe is the lovely rapport between the hollow-eyed, cadaverous Bud Cort, as the death-obsessed teenage misfit Harold, and Ruth Gordon's twinkling Maude, his doomed but adorable spiritual savior. The freshness and simplicity of their performances rub away any potential unseemliness, or sappiness, in their romantic pairing.

It's impossible, unfortunately, to resist replaying the charms of the movie in your mind as you watch Tom Jones and Joseph Thalken's tepid stage adaptation, which had its premiere Sunday night at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, N.J., in a wan production enlivened by the brisk presence of Estelle Parsons as Maude. ''Harold & Maude: The Musical'' (a somehow dispiriting title to begin with ) strains and sputters as it works to recapture both the movie's uplifting message, carpe diem and all that, and its subversive comic streak.

It is, in fact, that strange alchemy that explains the movie's enduring appeal. But the musical version extracts the ingredient that hasn't aged so well, that self-helpy moral: live life to the fullest! and plays it to the hilt, while the movie's astringent comic sensibility has evaporated, to be replaced by bloated comic shtick supplied by a variety of supporting characters.

That Mr. Jones, at least, is more at home with the movie's hippie romanticism than its cynicism isn't surprising. He is best known as the author, with Harvey Schmidt, of the musical ''The Fantasticks,'' which opened in 1960, and, much like Mr. Ashby and Mr. Higgins's movie of a decade later, gradually snowballed from cult favorite to cultural touchstone. Mr. Jones's and Mr. Schmidt's musical fable, which ran for a whopping four decades at the Sullivan Street Playhouse, also celebrated the healing power of love in a dehumanizing world.

Mr. Jones, who wrote both book and lyrics for ''Harold & Maude,'' displays his natural affinity for Maude and her feisty spirit in a series of solos or duets in which she imparts life lessons to her new acolyte. In ''Round and Round (The Cosmic Dance),'' she exhorts her charge to ''make a joyful sound'' and ''see the seed beneath the snow.'' A couple of scenes later she's inviting him to take ''The Road Less Traveled,'' to embark on a ''voyage to discover who you really are.''

Harold, blandly characterized but likably played by Eric Millegan, joins the party in their next duet, ''Two Sides of a River,'' as they agree to be ''wonderers and wanderers and friends.'' Opening Act II, Maude exults, ''I've got a song in my pocket!'' Her parting piece of wisdom: ''Don't miss the chance to sing.''

These numbers, given some alluring melodic upholstery by Mr. Thalken, are the most appealing and effective in the uneven score, but they are all variations on similar themes. Ms. Parsons does her best to give distinctions to such musical bromides, despite a tentative singing voice. She wisely resists the temptation to play Maude as a kind of hippie fairy godmother, bringing a welcome, no-nonsense snap to Maude's fey pronouncements.

But Maude's philosophy, in 1971 possibly as revolutionary as her attachment to organic foods, hardly strikes the same iconoclastic note today. Indeed, far from being a misfit, Maude would probably be a successful life coach and best-selling author in the period in which the musical is set, a vague later decade of the 20th century. (There are references to aerobics and Madonna.)

Nevertheless, the stultifying social order Harold and Maude were rebelling against in 1971, personified by all the usual authority figures -- mother, shrink, cop and soldier -- has been replicated here (minus the soldier). But Mr. Jones has let these figures in on the joke, turning them into broadly comic turns for Donna Lynne Champlin and Danny Burstein, who labor mightily, and often successfully, to inject comic life into their often dubious material. (Most unfortunate choice: A comic song for Mr. Burstein as a scatalogically obsessed therapist.)

Mr. Jones's uncertain comic touch is exemplified by the watered-down treatment of Harold's mother (Donna English; fine, but no Vivian Pickles), who suddenly drops her character-defining solipsism in the second act when she breaks into a farcical number inspired by worry over her son's absence.

That's one of the few occasions when Mr. Jones's book departs from the blueprint of the movie, but its attempts to translate the comic episodes from the original are rarely more successful. Mr. Ashby's wittily deadpan framing supplied much of the humor in Harold's staged suicide attempts and his encounters with a series of computer dates.

The director, Mark S. Hoebee, who also supplied the minimal choreography, has a far coarser sensibility, and is unable to smooth out the naturally choppy structure inherited from the film.

It's possible that, shorn of some of its weaker material, the musical might thrive in a more fluid and intimate production. But anyone with a pronounced affection for the movie is likely to leave the Paper Mill wishing that one of the most appealing couples in movie history had been left to rest in peace, as they most certainly would have preferred.

The show runs through Feb. 6.


And here's a link to a page from which you can link to other reviews of the show (none of which I have read yet):

"Harold & Maude" reviews


This post is getting too long -- I'll start a new question in another post.

I know we've used this guy before.

1. He starred in "Dr. Spock's Field of Expertise".

2. He traveled "From Quebec to Seattle".

3. He had "A Memorable Liaison".

I'm off to practice the piano -- I'll check back for your (undoubtedly correct) answer in half an hour or so.

I'm still reading the reviews. I'd like this musical to succeed and have not given up on it yet. Of course, I love the music in Fantasticks. But, they've gone about this musical all wrong. Mother should have a more dramatic song, Harold should have at least one poignant number (with violins) elaborating on the reasons for his despondency, and at least two of the supporting characters' songs should be replaced by full chorus. I think that should do it.

I never did get around to memorizing all my favorite Cyrano lines. I do remember Cyrano's lines toward the end of the play:

"Never on me had rested woman's love. My mother even could not find me fair. I had no sister and when grown a man I feared a mistress who might mock me. But I have had your friendship. Grace to you, a woman's charm has passed across my path."

Ferrer spoke those lines so eloquently.


I like your clues. Now to decipher them.

Aaaah. Cary Grant

1. He starred in "Dr. Spock's Field of Expertise". - Bringing Up Baby

2. He traveled "From Quebec to Seattle". - North by Northwest

3. He had "A Memorable Liaison". - An Affair to Remember

Yes indeed -- I'm a little shaky on geography, so I was hoping I had the direction from Quebec to Seattle right!

LOL. Me, too. I went right by the geography clue - and Dr. Spock, because all I could think of was Star Trek - to memorable liaison.

Let's narrow it down to two for a start. Because right now I can't think of any other clues. (lol)

This star was in a movie about:

1. A reptile after dark

and

2. A cherished pagan

Deborah Kerr (tie-in to An Affair to Remember) was in:

1. Night of the Iguana

and

2. Beloved Infidel

Yes. Too easy? Or are you just too clever?