A Movie Scene Quiz

Oh, that's funny. The valium scene, I mean. I never saw "An Unmarried Woman". I'll have to be on the lookout for that one.

I just looked at Austin Pendleton's movies on IMDb. I saw a bunch he was in after Starting Over, but really don't remember his roles - like Amistad, Mr. and Mrs. Bridge and Searching for Bobby Fischer. I think one of you mentioned seeing or reading about another of his plays here at one time, but his name didn't register with me then.

Great research work! Much as I love Paul Newman, I'm kind of glad that movie never got made. I have a feeling it would have been a disaster.

Yes, a Newman/Loren version of After the Fall would have been very odd. For that matter, I can't quite imagine a Plummer/Dunaway version! She's not one of my favorites.

Yesterday I watched (most of) The Golden Bowl as well as Jefferson in Paris on the IFC channel. (no commercials ) More Merchant Ivory than most people would want - but I loved it. I had seen Golden Bowl, but couldn't remember the details, and had never seen Jefferson in Paris.

I can't imagine who those people are -- to my mind, there's no such thing as too much Merchant Ivory!

Yes, exactly!

As if one can ingest a maximum of Merchant-Ivory! Pish tosh!

Following along and wow, didn't know Austin Pendleton was writing! I do hope you get to see the show, and do, yes read Rhinoceros before it. It was such a classic of the absurdist theater--I well remember the transformation of Zero Mostel into this lumbering Rhino by the end of the play. Quite something.

I recall an entire summer where I read nothing but Theater of the Absurd plays. Made for an interesting commute...although it took a few minutes to come back to earth and the Lackawanna railroad!

Found this interesting comparison in a website on Ionesco:
These, and other characteristics of Ionesco's works can be related to Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Daisy's reasoning is similar to that of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern often make assumptions based on what seems like irrelevant information. For example, one morning Rosencrantz says, "That's west unless we're off course, in which case it's night." This statement is not logical. The direction they are traveling has nothing to do with whether it is night or day. Statements similar to the confusing statements found in Ionesco's plays, such as The Bald Soprano are also evident in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. One conversation between Rosencrantz and Guildenstern goes like this:

Guildenstern: Why?

Rosencrantz: Exactly.

Guildenstern: Exactly what?

Rosencrantz: Exactly, why.

Guildenstern: Exactly why what?

Rosencrantz: What?

Guildenstern: Why?

Rosencrantz: Why what, exactly?

Guildenstern: Why is he mad?!

Rosencrantz: I don't know!

Stoppard is one of my favorites anyway, but it was interesting to see them compared; I never really thought of him being a part of Absurdist Theater...but what was I thinking?

For some reason, Rosencrantz's statement, "That's west unless we're off course, in which case it's night", reminds me of the Groucho Marx line (delivered when he's pretending to be taking someone's pulse), "Either this man is dead or my watch has stopped."

But then, of course, Groucho Marx was the precursor of all the great absurdist playwrights.

Wow. Great conversation here, but I'm so upset about my shopping trip today, I'm still trembling. Unless Bree has a question ready (it's Bree's turn), I'll tell you about it.

Do tell, Raggedy!

OK.

Well, I had just put a box of Wheaties in my cart and started down the aisle where they have the tomato soup and corn, etc., when suddenly several excaped cons burst into the store. I can tell you I wasn't going to be subject to an attack from those cons. I ran out of that store so fast I bet I broke the speed record of every Texas pro football running back in history.

I would love to have seen that! How many movies does that story contain clues to?

So would I - me running that fast, that is.

Five movies will do it.

Hmm... I've got the actor, and I've got four movies, but the fifth is eluding me. I'm going to go do some work for a while in the hope that the title of the fifth movie will pop into my mind while I'm not thinking about it.

OK. You'll notice that the actor is a tie-in to Mac's earlier post.

And, I just looked up a pianist that was in my crossword puzzle. Myra Hess. Very interesting. Would make a good movie.

Yep, I noticed that about the actor and the tie-in.

About all I know about Myra Hess is that she often gave lunchtime recitals in London churches during the Blitz. Also, she sometimes prefaced her recitals by asking everyone in the audience to cough now, to get it over with so they wouldn't cough while she was playing.

I didn't see anything about the coughing, or about her personal life, but it took a lot of courage to play as she did during the Blitz.

"In the first months of the Second World War, all live music performances ceased in Britain. Dame Myra cut short a tour of America that was in progress, and on returning to London, she inaugurated what was to become a remarkable and popular series of lunch-time concerts at the National Gallery, a building then emptied of its treasures for safekeeping during the Blitz. This was exactly what people needed since the black-outs made it difficult for London's suburban residents to travel up to town after dark. And so Classical music symbolically and physically replaced the paintings and sculptures of the National Gallery, and an audience which included not only regular devotees, but also many who had never heard such music before came about as a result of Hess's brainchild to replace one kind of art with another, enabling the National Gallery to continue functioning as Great Britain's chief center of art.


Undoubtedly an enormous range of works were performed at these concerts by hundreds of composers and performers. However, particularly outstanding among the Gallery Concerts were the performances of the complete series of Mozart Piano Concertos by Myra Hess in collaboration with Alec Sherman and his New London Orchestra.


By the Autumn of 1944, more than 1300 concerts had been performed at the National Gallery in this series, £15,000 paid out in artists' fees and £10,000 paid to the Musicians' Benevolent Fund. The concerts continued throughout the bombing of London though they ran at a loss during the most difficult days. However, contributions from music lovers in the United States and Canada helped to defray expenses when attendances were small."

My kind of woman.

That's right -- it was the National Gallery, not churches!

I give up on the fifth movie, so I'm going to go with Nick Nolte (star of The Golden Bowl and Jefferson in Paris) and four movies:

Breakfast of Champions (a box of Wheaties)
Cannery Row (the aisle where they have the tomato soup and corn, etc.)
Three Fugitives (several escaped cons)
North Dallas Forty (every Texas pro football running back in history)

What, pray tell, is the fifth movie?

It's a weak clue. "to be subject to an attack " - UNDER FIRE

You owe us a question. Actually, two.