The Poppy-Fields Movie Couch Of Fame: Some Like It Hot
Submitted by Sarah D. Bunting on August 28, 2015 – 7:11 AM9 Comments
Screen: UA
Nobody’s perfect.
Reader Laura’s got a vintage film for us to consider. Laura, take it away!
- lengthy? A little bit at 120 minutes
- familiar/frequent? It’s on a few times a year on AMC
- classic/award-winner? Undeniably a classic. Billy Wilder was nominated for Best Director and Jack Lemmon for Best Actor. The film won best comedy at the Golden Globes.
- “Greetings, Professor Falken” (big payoff/long-shot victory a la WarGames)? Nope.
- “Wanna have a catch?” (Pavlovian tear-jerk; anything with dads opens the ducts for this guy)? Nope.
- quote-fest? Okay, I know I’m a bit of a dork, but yes, I love the quotes. “The fuzzy end of the lollypop,” “Beanstalk!”, “I can never have children”
- caper-ish or -adjacent camaraderie? Absolutely. Lemmon and Curtis are a riot!
- “forget you, melon farmer” (you own it, but will still watch bowdlerized TV verzh)No language changes needed but LOTS of innuendo. The long shot of Monroe singing “I Wanna Be Loved by You” with the spotlight playing with the image of her gown is scandalizing! :)
Thanks, Laura!
I’ve never seen Some Like It Hot all the way through. Speaking of scandalizing! I do think Billy Wilder is brilliant generally; I think I would enjoy it, but I can’t speak to whether it’s a PFM or not, so I’m going to turn it over to the readers and see if they think it has the required ensorcelling powers.
Readers, what say you?
The Poppy-Fields Movie Couch Of Fame is here. To nominate your own PFM, email bunting at tomatonation dot com with a rundown of the criteria and your argument for why it deserves a cushion. If I use your entry, free loot shall be thine.
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Tags: Billy Wilder Jack Lemmon Marilyn Monroe movies poppy-fields movies Some Like It Hot
I saw Some Like It Hot again last year and I was disappointed. Time hasn’t been its friend. I remembered it as a funny movie, and of course the relationship between “Daphne” and the millionaire is a Celluloid Closet-classic, but now I saw a sad story about an alcoholic girl who is deluded by a manipulating asshole. And the sexism is just too rampant for me.
Oh, totally poppy fields material. The music’s good, the dialogue’s good, Tony Curtis’ Cary Grant impression is good. The only problem with it is that when I fall asleep during it I have to play it back to hear all the lines I missed. (“I knew a girl from Bryn Mawr once. She squealed on her rooommate and they found her strangled with her own brassiere.” Gets me every. Damn. Time.)
This movie may not have been a PFM candidate when the day began, but it is NOW, for a totally non-canon reason: That photo of Lemmon up there looks SO MUCH like Brandon Flowers, circa 2006, that I now will have to watch this whenever I can. Thank you.
One of the funniest movies ever made, and if I had to pick a favorite Billy Wilder film, this would be it. Curtis manages to juggle both Joe, Josephine, and “Shell Jr.”, and be funny in all of them, Marilyn Monroe is funny and sings very well, and George Raft and Pat O’Brien are having a lot of fun sending up their 30’s personas, but to me, this movie wouldn’t work nearly as well without Lemmon, who throws himself into the role with complete abandon. Plus, he gets most of the great lines:
“Now you are talking; *now* you are talking!”
“I tell you, it’s a whole different sex!”
“I’m a girl…I’m a girl…I wish I was dead…I’m a girl.”
“You tore off one of my chests!”
“Joe, this may be my last chance to marry a millionaire!”
“I’m a boy…I’m a boy…I wish I was dead…I’m a boy…boy, oh, boy am I a boy.”
+1 for what Cat_slave said (and thanks for saying it better than I would have)
This movie is definitely a ‘stop on the channel and watch for a little while’ if I encounter it while surfing. But I don’t necessarily HAVE to watch it all the way through. With some PFMs, I don’t want to miss the big payoff scene (when the Shawshank tunnel gets discovered; the Apollo 13 capsule coming out of blackout; etc.), and I guess this movie has the reveal scene at the end. But it doesn’t feel as must-see to me.
I would agree with StatMom on this one — I’ll always stop and watch it for awhile if it comes up, but I don’t often stick with it. Not sure why.
Well, looks like this one’s a no-go.
The AFI poll picked Some Like It Hot as the best comedy of all time. While my choice would’ve been Blazing Saddles, I really couldn’t argue with their pick.