Last night we watched S.O.B. and the resulting podcast felt a little sub par to my mind. I absolutely love this movie and to watch Garvis and Kayla both dosing off during it because of room temperature issues left me so flummoxed that I couldn't concentrate very well on my own thoughts. I decided to take a look back at my blog from 2010 (365 Days of DVDs found at www.garvis2.wordpress.com) and see if I had reviewed S.O.B. on there. To my delight I found that I had on July 8, 2010 to be exact. So what did I have to say about it 6 years ago during my last viewing? Keep in mind my rating system then was 1 to 4 stars, not the current 5 stars we use on Cinema Toast Crunch.
I saw S.O.B. at the Plaza East Cinemas when it first came out. It was at that point the funniest film I had ever seen. It’s easily still in my top 5. S.O.B. was different from most other comedies I had seen. The humor was dark slapstick with some of the most wonderfully quotable dialogue. It was silly and incredibly intelligent at the same time, often in the same scene. I was reminded of the special type of humor found in this film when I decided to pop it in the DVD player on Wednesday.
I know the film’s every twist and turn. I can quote much of the script from memory. Yet there was this moment where Stuart Margolin quietly walks in while Julie Andrews as Sally Miles is playing the piano and very casually informs her that her husband, producer/director Felix Farmer (played by the hilarious Richard Mulligan) has just tried to kill himself. The line is not inherently funny, but the delivery of the line as pure matter of factness, nothing out of the ordinary made me crack up even after multiple viewings.
S.O.B. is another one of those films where there is not a bad performance in the entire motion picture. In addition to Mulligan there are hilarious performances from Robert Preston as the doctor and Robert Webber as the press agent. When the two of them are on screen together there is hardly a scene that can fail to produce a laugh or at least a smile. William Holden as Cully, an old friend in the business that is called in to keep an eye on Felix as he recovers from his suicide attempt after the failure of his latest film, os the perfect straight man. Holden helps keep the film grounded without stamping on the comedy. His role could have very easily sank the film if he had played it too over the top or too serious, but Holden walks the razor’s edge with the precision of a high wire performer and delivers what should have been an Oscar winning performance. Sadly he wasn’t even nominated. Apparently Hollywood doesn’t like having people make fun of its vanity.
Watching S.O.B. right after watching Network provides an interesting comparison. Network satirized network television and television news but with an orderly flow of carefully paced dialogue. S.O.B. is a satire of the motion picture business, but the dialogue is delivered in rapid fire volleys. A perfect example is the scene where Robert Preston refers to another character as a “nervous Jew” and Robert Webber fires back while pacing and indicating himself , “That’s not a nervous Jew. This is a nervous Jew.” Preston’s doctor doesn’t miss a beat before remarking, “Funny, you don’t look nervous.” It’s such a multi-layered joke and the physical nervousness of Webber’s character coupled with Preston’s relaxed calmness just makes it comedy gold.
S.O.B. was famous for Julie Andrews topless scene. A situation that is mirrored in the movie itself as Andrews character is described as Peter Pan and America’s G-rated sweetheart. The fact that the topless scene in Night Wind, the film within the film, is for all intents and purposes totally gratuitous is another case of a multi-layered joke. Since the scene is not truly necessary to Night Wind, it could also be argued that the scene is gratuitous to S.O.B. as well. However since the point of the scene is the fact that it is a shock effect scene designed to sell tickets masquerading as an important and integral element of the film, its inclusion in S.O.B. is valid and necessary. This is the wonderful complexity of S.O.B.
Once again S.O.B. held up remarkably well and easily rates the same 4 stars I would have given it on first viewing. I hadn’t seen it for several years and watching it again brought back many a fond memory.