Bad Movie Night: Skidoo (1968)

I had written last week that I had zero desire to watch (likely Best Picture-winner) “12 Years A Slave” because its subject matter simply did not interest me, nor did I think the subject matter was pertinent for today. I could be wrong, and probably am.  Nonetheless, here I am writing about a movie with scenes of torture so extreme that the studio had tried to keep this movie under wraps for as long as possible.

I speak of “Skidoo”, the 1968 atrocity that is considered to be one of the greatest train wrecks in the history of all cinema.  It’s a movie so bad that it can only have been made by really talented people.  It’s a movie that struck out so solidly that the ball richocheted of the catcher’s glove , spiralled out of the field, and became a home run grand slam at the stadium next door.

I mean, you’d think that this would spoil the movie.  I read a lot about the film before I saw it, and I still sat, aghast, at the notorious wonders that behold me.  Those frozen agape-mouthed faces at “The Producers” made the year before?  They could have been watching this film.

If you were to read the imdb synopsis of the film, it would no doubt go into detail about Jackie Gleason as a retired hit man being swayed in to do one last job for a mob boss named “God” (played by Groucho Marx, in his last role), to off a squealer in prison (played by Mickey Rooney).  While there, he mistakenly ingests LSD that was smuggled in by fellow inmate Austin Pendleton (his first movie role). Pandemonium ensues.

Meanwhile his daughter falls into the hippie scene, which is subsequently taken in by wife Carol Channing.  Other names: Michael Constantine, Frankie Avalon, Slim Pickins, Peter Lawford, George Raft, Richard Kiel (“Jaws” in the Bond movies) and the three great _Batman_ baddies: Cesar (“Joker”) Romero, Burgess (“Penguin”) Meredith, and  Frank (“Riddler”) Gorshin.

This synopsis is clearly not telling the whole story.  In fact, I would pay dearly for a biopic or documentary on the making of this film.  In a just world, “Mad Men” would have covered this terrain this past season.  Tim Burton would have made this happen, as a companion piece to his “Ed Wood.”

The following is pure conjecture on my part, but bear with me: in the late sixties, the world was changing.  The boomer generation was coming of age.  Fashion, music, movies, were changing.  And the great celebrity spokesmen were seeing their empires slipping away from them, to a generation that really found their input wanting.

Enter Otto Preminger.  Once a revered director of “Laura” and “The Man With the Golden Arm,” among other great films, his last films were a bust at the box office.  And it turned out Hollywood was calling for his services–not as a director, but as an actor.  He played “Mr. Freeze” on that popular Batman TV series (which is where he probably connected with the three actors above).  This certainly was his education towards understanding the new generation.

He finds a script that targets the counterculture, and loves it.  He then reaches out to the above-mentioned Hollywood icons, some of whom were responsible for some of the greatest comedies (movies, television, and Broadway) in history.

These actors also had seen better days.  And finally they had a funny script–a sure thing–to connect the counterculture with the generations that had loved their work years before.  It didn’t matter that the script didn’t make a whole ton of sense, because it was so ca-ray-zee.  It didn’t matter that Preminger had never directed a comedy of this caliber before, or that the film winds up being an endorsement of illegal substances (being heartily endorsed by Dr. Timothy Leary).  These comedians were desperate to regain relevance in a fast changing world, and here was their chance to make it again.

And that was what I took out of this film.  Comedy ought to be a natural expression of your own self, and here was a highly embarrassing example of comedy done wrong.

Jackie Gleason’s work on The Honeymooners stands as some of the greatest situation comedy ever made.  The Marx Brothers output is timeless.  Carol Channing is no doubt a giant Broadway star with an oversized personality.  But this sort of comedy has that putrid stench of desperation written all over it.  Desperate comedy is never, ever funny.  If you lose an audience due to time, and your comic personae becomes dated, your best bet is to wait it out, until you can re-invent yourself authentically.

Look at the Saturday Night Live actors.  Chevy Chase was red-hot in the 80s, and then things cooled.  He has since re-emerged as a supporting player in cult-favorite Community.

Bill Murray entered the 80s even hotter.  But after Groundhog Day, his personae began to get tiring and his output suffered. It wasn’t until a few well-placed supporting turns in smaller films that his status became even hotter.

I can name other examples. My biggest point is that sustaining comedy is not easy to do over a period of decades. Times change, people change. Entering the public consciousness and helping define comedy can be an impediment, as others emerge and take your groundwork to another level entirely.  And to those comedians, they are best to sit back, study the scene, and reinvent yourself naturally.  Slipshod efforts to woo an audience will be seen as the catastrophic efforts they are.

I know for myself that there have been times when I perform my comedy, and when my comedy connects, it is a most wonderful feeling.  And then when I perform the same material in another audience, and it doesn’t connect, there is that feeling of desperation. I don’t want to be so, but it happens. So I have great empathy towards entertainers who go for broke, and miss. And in those times, I know I need to step back, survey the situation, and be myself; if I am observant, I can reconnect, somehow.  I just need to be patient.

One last thing: the only person to escape from Skidoo unscathed is then-newcomer Austin Pendleton. Pendleton never hit A-list status, in fact, he is currently a drama teacher in New York.  But he has made an impact over the course of forty years in movies as varied as “Catch-22”, “The Front Page”, “The Muppet Movie”, “Simon”, “Searching For Bobby Fischer”, “A Beautiful Mind” and “Finding Nemo.”  He was the only person who trusted the material, and played it straight.  Major kudos to his long and non-illustrious career.