April
23
Joe Dante Whips Out 1968 Movie Orgy
Posted by Peter Debruge:
At a time when most rep houses seem to be in hot water, Los Angeles’ New Beverly packed ’em in last night for the finale of “Dante’s Inferno,” two weeks of forgotten classics guest programmed by Joe Dante. 
While many of the director's picks were obscure, none could compete with “The Movie Orgy,” a marathon 4½-hour clip show Dante first assembled in 1968 with Jon Davison, then put on ice for nearly four decades.
Understand, The Movie Orgy isn’t a proper movie but an exercise in extreme film geekdom, as Dante and Davison spliced 16mm trailers, clips, newsreel footage, bloopers and old TV shows together to form a semi-linear commentary on/reaction against the time. Over the years, the project has earned a borderline apocryphal reputation, called by some the “Rosetta Stone” of Dante’s career — a glimpse deep into the filmmaker’s id — and it’s a testament to the city’s cult film scene that so many stayed for the entire show. (Full report after the jump.)
Because it predates Dante’s career with Roger Corman (where Davison also got his start), The Movie Orgy serves as that rare artifact that reveals the raw inspiration for the sly, self-conscious sense of humor evident in Hollywood Boulevard (choppy enough to have been assembled the same way), Piranha/Gremlins/Explorers (tongue-in-cheek tributes to a time when fantasy was strictly B-movie fodder) and Matinee (a valentine to Cold War paranoia and Hollywood hucksterism). Its structure owes more to television than the big screen, with what little narrative exists frequently interrupted for commercial breaks.
Two features, The Attack of the 50-Foot Woman and Speed Crazy, serve as the movie’s backbone, with Dante cutting out the boring parts and returning every so often to provide another scene (he also samples heavily from Beginning of the End, The Giant Gila Monster and Earth vs. the Flying Saucers — all Mystery Science Theater 3000 favorites). Relying on those clips to supply some semblance of forward motion, he then feels free to do loop-de-loops with other footage.
Savvy splices allow adjacent pieces of footage to comment on one another, as when film noir gangsters crack wise during Nixon’s famous Checkers speech or an informational dog-training strip cuts to a U.S. Marine recruitment video. In other cases, Dante collapses entire features into a single scene, as with an episode of Desilu’s Life & Legend of Wyatt Earp and the canine-come-home drama The Return of Rusty, or inserts subliminal belly dancing footage into commercials for kids’ products. For the grand finale, he orchestrates the explosive climaxes of at least half a dozen different B movies into a single apocalyptic shootout. (If I ever get another chance to see it, I’ll count how many times the words “The End” appear on screen. Dozens.)
These days, anyone with iMovie and a home computer can attempt a feat of this nature, but few have the sense of humor or savvy to draw from such varied sources. In his introduction last night, Dante feared the movie might seem overly dated, but this sort of ironic postmodern commentary is more popular now than ever (a handful of patently racist and religious-themed clips pack an even stronger punch in these politically correct times). And though Dante encouraged the crowd to saunter in and out at will, assuring them they wouldn’t miss anything, he’s assembled it in such a way that gags build on earlier clips (every Speed Crazy clip, for example, features racing maniac Nick Barrow offering a variation on the line, “Don’t crowd me, Joe” — a line Paul Rudd would repeat decades later in Dante’s Runaway Daughters).
If only every director sat down to create such a pastiche of their favorite footage, we’d have a better idea of their influences. The next best thing is series like Dante’s Inferno, where fans can watch entire features (although, if Quentin Tarantino’s grindhouse bonanza was any indication, the full-length movies can seriously test an audience’s stamina). Both programs — as well as lineups hosted by Eli Roth and Edgar Wright — were the brainchild of the New Beverly Cinema, which celebrates its 30th anniversary in May. The following month, Diablo Cody picks her favorite hipster flicks.
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Joe Dante is one of the most underrated filmmakers around. The Howling, Gremlins, Explorers, Innerspace, The 'Burbs, Gremlins 2, Matinee and Small Soldiers are a delight to sit through, affectionate genre homages from a director with real heart, unlike the vapid summer blockbusters we have today.
Posted by: Mark | April 24, 2008 at 01:17 AM
I made it to three nights of the double features (though I did miss the Movie Orgy). Dante was an exceptional host and is a very underrated movie director. In the past week I've watched his very personal and somewhat twisted "Explorers" and the brilliant dark satire "Homecoming". These series at the New Beverly Cinema have been fantastic and I'll be looking forward to their 30th Anniversary series as well as the screenings hosted by Diablo Cody.
Posted by: Bob | April 24, 2008 at 09:02 AM
Austin, Texas power couple John and Janet Pierson (the new program chief at SXSW) and I attended Joe Dante's Friday night New Beverly screening of writer-producer-director Richard Brooks' manic comedy Wrong is Right, an amazingly prescient vision of the future circa 1982 starring Sean Connery as a globe-trotting muckraking TV newsman. Largely ignored when it came out, the plot points are surreal: global powers fighting over mideast oil, terrorists threatening the World Trade Center, TV broadcasters geared toward entertainment, not news. It was like looking at today's headlines through a distorted 25-year lens. People don't make broad comedy satires like this anymore: I guess Mike Nichols' Charlie Wilson's War is as close as you'll get. Or the night's second feature, Dante's own derivative The Second Civil War, which he made in 1997 for HBO, about a governor (Beau Bridges) who closes Idaho's borders to all immigrants, forcing the president (Phil Hartman) to send in troops. Meanwhile CNN-like newscasters Denis Leary and Elizabeth Pena, under the manic direction of Dan Hedaya, are trying to cover the story. Maybe I was tired, but the two films have completely merged in my mind, as if they were the same film.
Posted by: anne thompson | April 24, 2008 at 01:04 PM
It was indeed a wonderful night, especially for me, since it was the first time I'd been back tot he theatre since my dear friend Sherman Torgan passed away last year. But with all due respect to Joe, let's not forget that Jon Davison was also a big part of it.
Posted by: cadavra | April 26, 2008 at 11:57 AM
One of the greatest film-going nights of my life. I feel like we all shared a unique experience. Wish I woulda saw you Cadavra.
Posted by: christian | April 27, 2008 at 03:37 PM