That's what makes it. The irregularity. The unexpected little twist.
This afternoon, courtesy of Turner Classic Movies, I watched 1964's Kiss Me, Stupid, the last of Billy Wilder's '60s films that I needed to see. Written by Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond, it starred Dean Martin essentially as himself, but all anyone ever calls him is Dino. As the film starts, he's closing in Vegas and on his way back to Hollywood when he gets stranded in Climax, Nevada, where piano teacher Ray Walston -- who is highly suspicious of his beautiful wife Felicia Farr -- and his songwriting partner Cliff Osmond, who runs the service station, try to hook him on one their tunes. The bait? Kim Novak, the prettiest cocktail waitress at the Belly Button, the local roadhouse.
The film also features a rare appearance in the flesh for Mel Blanc, who plays Dr. Sheldrake, the town dentist, and familiar face John Fiedler (who mostly worked in television, but also did films starting with the plum role of Juror #2 in Twelve Angry Men) as the local reverend who's getting a petition together to get the Belly Button shut down. Henry Gibson even shows up as a character named Smith, but I wasn't able to spot him. (Perhaps I should have had my eye out for his counterpart, Wesson.) Who else but Wilder (and Diamond) would concoct such a frothy cocktail of farce, adultery and sentimentality? Nobody, that's who.