Catch-22 on DVD
Hey.
Got to watch it overnight. Since I already knew the story from seeing it on television a couple times, and from the book as well, and from the Cliff's Notes on top of that, I decided to view it with the Commentary audio track on. Director Mike Nichols and Steven Soderbergh talk about how the shots were made and about the actors and how they got along during the production.
It's peculiar how the things that got censored from the TV prints made a lot of the difference. One example: in the sequence when the bomber squadron is about to take off on a mission (right after Yossarian and Doc Daneeka make the first mention of Catch-22 [the regulation]), Colonel Cathcart shows thumbs-up to his men from the control tower, the pilots salute him back with thumbs-up...and Yossarian flips Cathcart a bird. I certainly don't remember this from the TV version.
Paramount spent all sorts of money on this movie, shooting parts in Rome, building an airbase in Mexico and blowing it to pieces in the air raid sequence, assembling a whole squadron of bomber planes, getting a hot director and a top-notch cast...and the finished product was eclipsed (probably rightly so) by M*A*S*H. I guess this is proof that you could do everything right and take all the right risks and still lose.
FP
Got to watch it overnight. Since I already knew the story from seeing it on television a couple times, and from the book as well, and from the Cliff's Notes on top of that, I decided to view it with the Commentary audio track on. Director Mike Nichols and Steven Soderbergh talk about how the shots were made and about the actors and how they got along during the production.
It's peculiar how the things that got censored from the TV prints made a lot of the difference. One example: in the sequence when the bomber squadron is about to take off on a mission (right after Yossarian and Doc Daneeka make the first mention of Catch-22 [the regulation]), Colonel Cathcart shows thumbs-up to his men from the control tower, the pilots salute him back with thumbs-up...and Yossarian flips Cathcart a bird. I certainly don't remember this from the TV version.
Paramount spent all sorts of money on this movie, shooting parts in Rome, building an airbase in Mexico and blowing it to pieces in the air raid sequence, assembling a whole squadron of bomber planes, getting a hot director and a top-notch cast...and the finished product was eclipsed (probably rightly so) by M*A*S*H. I guess this is proof that you could do everything right and take all the right risks and still lose.
FP