I confess based on the rules of this month’s challenge I kind of cheated. I briefly looked up a couple of images to refresh my memory on Arab robes and Dromedary Camels for this sketch of Lawrence of Arabia. I think I blew it anyway as I have Lawrence way too low looking like he’s sitting on the camel’s neck rather than on top of the hump. I suppose I could argue that I was trying to fit everything in the page but I don’t think anyone will buy that.
Anyway this is the scene of T. E. Lawrence leading the attack on the Turkish base in Aqaba which is heavily fortified against a naval attack but open to a land attack since nobody thought anyone would be crazy enough to trek through hundreds of miles of desert to do it.
This week’s theme was a bit of a comedy of errors. I started with the intent with going for corporate marketing based around the Hudsucker Proxy but when I arrived at Scarecrow I found both of their copies out. So I went with yellow journalism and media sensationalism instead. One movie very funny and the other was most definitely not.
The funny one, The Front Page. was directed by Billy Wilder and starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau and was the third film to be based on the play of the same name. It takes place in the press room of a Chicago courthouse on the night before a hanging where a half dozen newsmen (I’m not completely sure if it’s accurate to call them journalists) wait for the hanging to occur and battle to get the most sensationalistic scoop… even if they have to make it up! Then the prisoner escapes and hilarity ensues.
I saw the original play back when I used to usher at Trinity Repertory Theater and loved it. Unfortunately it’s been years so I don’t quite remember it well enough to tell just how straight an adaptation Wilder’s film is. But I think it makes for a good example for my on going pondering about what makes a good film adaptation of a film. I believe Wilder does a good job expanding the story from the single newsroom set of the play and moving around from the courthouse, to a newspaper office, to the train station and elsewhere throughout Chicago.
This was well paced comedy with a great performance from everybody with Jack Lemmon as a cocky star reporter who’s trying to quit the business to get married but can’t resist one last scoop and Walter Matthau as his hilariously amoral editor who will do anything for a story. As far as I’m concerned this is pretty much Matthau’s movie as he dominates every scene he is in with his fast-talking and manipulation.
Burt Lancaster plays J.J Hunsecker, a powerful columnist who forces publicist Sidney Falco to attempt to break up his sister and a handsome jazz guitarist.
This is easily my favorite Lancaster performance; He plays Hunsecker as a completely driven and narcissistic demanding respect and stopping at nothing to get what he wants provided it doesn’t tarnish his reputation. Curtis is wonderfully pathetic as Falco who, doing whatever it takes to make a buck and completely dependent on Hunsucker desperate for his approval and trailing behind him like a jackal does a lion.
This is a wonderfully brutal cynical film that paints a dark picture of humanity in a dark vision of New York captured brilliantly by Howe’s camera and accentuated by the jazz soundtrack performed by the Chico Hamilton Quintet.
I first saw My Man Godfrey this November and thought it was comic gold. Both a commentary and a parody of the upper crust in the middle of the depression.
So for today’s sketch we have Godfrey standing outside of the chaos that is the Bullock family before he enters the fray to calm the situation with copious matinees.
In hind sight I would want to tighten this image quite a bit moving Godfrey about an inch to the right. I was briefly considering having Molly the maid standing right behind Godfrey with a facetious “have fun in the shark pit” look on her face but I thought that would have been a distraction from the contrast between Godfrey and the Bullocks.
I had really mixed feelings when a drew the card for today’s Sketch, Touch of Evil. Make no mistake I loved the opening ten minute tracking shot of the car bomb scene and I loved Orson Welles‘ performance as the definitive bad cop Hank Quinlan. Though I felt the whole thing was dragged down by Charlton Heston and Janet Leigh, utterly cardboard performances as the “dashing Mexican detective” Mike Vargas and his wife Susie, which was the most blatant example of Race-bending that I had ever seen at the time. The problem is I’ve only seen it once and at the moment I don’t remember many of the details regarding the plot.
The reason behind this is once you get past this story of police ethics, corruption and murder you quickly realize Touch of Evil is about just one thing. Orson Welles.
As Hank Quinlan, Welles dominates every scene he is to the point you forget everything else (well besides the amazing camera work.) Anyone could have played Mike and Susie just as long as they were pretty. So the only thing I could really think of for the sketch was Welles’ domination of the film.
The October Monster sketch challenge was such a useful creative exercise that I decided to do it more often. I’d put it off for a couple of months because of playing catchup on my buffer. So now that I feel that I’m mostly caught I would start my first drawing challenge of the year. Febuary’s topic movies. For my selection for the random bag I pretty much cribbed the American Film Institute’s top 100 list with a few additions and subtractions (after all I did most of the horror films in October)
After this there are the usual rules. As usual I am expected to come up with the idea and execute it in the ball park of thirty minutes, this means if the idea isn’t one of your best you still have to own it and try to make the most of it. This means the odds of having a good sketch are about 50/50 but that’s what makes it a challenge.
Rules that are new for this month. No checking references, your sketch is based entirely on how you remember the film and if what you remember isn’t exactly accurate… that makes the drawing more interesting. Despite this there will be no improvising… so for today’s example If I were to think that Brian Cox or Mads Mikkelsen were better Hannibal Lecters that’s too bad. I have to draw Anthony Hopkins for your Silence of the Lambs picture… or at least the idea of Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter. And while we’re on the subject no cartoons that are just puns on a movie’s title. If you don’t know anything about the film no picture. To spell out exactly what I mean, after somehow avoiding reading it in school, I was well into my thirties before I learned that The Catcher in the Rye was not about baseball. Of course that won’t be an issue since I triaged the movies I wasn’t familiar with out of the list.
So anyway as you might have guessed today’s sketch was indeed from Silence of the Lambs. The scene is Clarice Starling first encounter with Lecter. I tried to go for a combination of dread having had Lecter hyped up so much for the last 15 minutes and having gone down a dark hallway with caged monsters the brief relief of seeing this small neat man (I’d almost imagine him wearing a silk scarf if the guards had let him) I tried to focus on the “nice purse and cheap shoes” aspect of Starling, nervous and worried she’s out of her depth and even more worried that Lecter can sense this. I can’t help wondering what the movie had chosen a “plainer” character actress rather than Jodie Foster .
