Well FATHER GEEK was up at 5am Tuesday morn to help Harry get ready for his limo to the airport at 5:30. All went well and the Head Geek made his 7:20 flight to Chicago and his meetings today (Tues.) with Roger Ebert and his staff. Wednesday he will actually be taping the show for airing this weekend (24th & 25th). In Austin the show will be at a wonderous 2am in the morning on the 25th. WOW, what a great time slot. Those interested in complaining should contact the program director at Austin’s Channel 36, that’s NBC affiliate KXAN. There will be a more reasonable chance to catch it for you locals at 2pm Sunday afternoon on tape at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in downtown Austin. There’s no charge. Our friends at the Alamo are hosting the showing on their giant screen as a public service. You just have to be geeky enough to be there. You will be rewarded with not only the Siskal & Ebert Show that has Harry sitting in Gene’s chair, but with various other TV appearances by Harry on the Japanese and German airwaves as well as a short Drama/Comedy made for HBO Independant Productions entitled APOCALYPSE KNOWLES. This roughly 10 minute film (using real actors and shot in LA) concerns the plot of a studio marketing head to have Harry elimated, and is in the style of HARDWARE WARS, CLOSET ENCOUNTERS OF THE NERD KIND, TROOPS, and PORKLIPS NOW. Like PORKLIPS this one spoofs APOCALYPSE NOW. We had nothing to do with the production of the film. In fact we didn’t even know it existed. Our copy just showed up in our po box about 8 months ago. It’s pretty cool, even if they did get our house all wrong.
Around noon I hear our characteristic mailbox sound and open the front door. There laying on the front porch is a large box that from its shape and weight I surmise contains 16mm film. Father Geek rapidly thumbs thru the card catalogue in his head and I suddenly realize that I must be holding one of Harry and my most favorite motion pictures in my hands. I rip open the box and there it is, our very own 16mm Technicolor print of the ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD from 1938. Micheal Curtiz’s masterwork, his rousing, definitive swashbuckler. Sol Polito’s wonderfully shot, ravishingly colored magnus opus. Eric Wolfgang Korngold’s marvellous, robust Academy Award winning score. It’s ours, ours to string up and show to our friends when ever we wish, ours to view an awesome 8 feet wide and crystal clear. Oh, my geeky heart sings with joy. Praise be the poor Hoosier that parted company with the beautiful and innocent Olivia, the daring Errol, the villianous Basil, the vile Rains, the rambunctious Hale, the cowardly Cooper, the rattlebrained O’Connor, the jocular Pallette, and the carefree Knowles. What a great double feature this will make with our PRINCE VALIANT, or our SEVENTH VOYAGE OF SINBAD films. Dammit, its a triple feature. Just toooooo cooool!!!
Tonight was another in the current Austin Film Society series on female screenwriters of the late 20s and 30s. Up for our viewing pleasure tonight would be Frances Marion’s 1931 hard-boiled mobster saga THE SECRET SIX. This series has been selling out at the Alamo so I left Geek Headquarters at 5:45 for the 7pm show. I snagged my customary 2nd row center seat and realized that in my excitement over our 16mm score today I had forgotten to eat. Now this is no problem at the Alamo, they maintain a full service kitchen with lots of different goodies, salads, pizzas, sandwiches, etc..., enough to satisfy the most demanding appetite, even Quint’s. I selected the Roasted Red Pepper Sandwich, made with Provolone, Romano, and Parmesan cheeses, grilled onion and red bell pepper, all on a fresh baked Focaccia bread with herb crust. I washed it all down with a pint of that popular black Irish stout and a pitcher of cool clear ice water. I was finishing up the thick, baked deli chips when Copernicus and his lovely lady plopped down in the seats next to me. All this time the screen before me had been showing the Alamo’s great collection of old Drive-in snack bar time-killers, but with contempory music instead of the mindless jingles. The room began to darken...
THE SECRET SIX was the film Ms. Marion scripted between her two Academy Awards. She had been honored in 1930 for THE BIG HOUSE (next Tuesday’s show) and in 1931 for THE CHAMP. Marion was perhaps the most powerful screenwriter of her day, maybe of all time. She chose and worked along side her directors. She had cast approval. She participated in the set and costume design, as well as the editing. Much of this at MGM a giant of the industry. Tonight’s feature was one of those films. She wrote it to compete with Warner’s successful gangster series. It’s tuff, but different, there’s a woman’s perspective, an undertone that leaves you with the knowledge that you have just witnessed something unique to cinema. It is really the birth of that sub-genre of the gangster film that reached it’s height in Father Geek’s opinion with WHITE HEAT. Just as she had started the Prison film genre with “Big House”, so she started the Undercover Agent genre with this film. I had never seen this flick before. My only knowledge of the movie came from it’s beautiful old stone litho 1-sheet poster that pasted thru my hands 25 or so years ago. Wallace Beery is outstanding as the milk guzzling racketeer boss with the nickname of “Slaughter House”. Lewis Stone is also excellent as the aristocratic over-lord. Ralph Bellamy is slimey as the backstabbing, scarfaced thug. Jean Harlow is perfectly cast as the heartwarming prostitute caught in the middle. Clark Gable and Johnny MacBrown are superb as on-the-take reporters for rival newspapers. In one scene they have incredible overlapping dialogue as they both call in stories at the same time to their editors. This type of complex use of sound was unheard of in 1931. It knocked me flat. A decade before Orsen Welles is credited with introducing it to motion pictures Marion wrote it into her film. I can’t wait till THE BIG HOUSE next Tuesday. I hope to see you there, it’s only 35 cents.
