(no subject)
In a conversation about our movie influences and the stuff that made us fans, one of my local Live Journal pals, 32elvismovies, asked the question "Why would anyone ridicule Elwy?" after I had mentioned that Elwy Yost, the former host of TV ONTARIO's SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES is sometimes mocked by people who see themselves as more movie-literate than he is.
A lot of people, and specifically those who want to be seen as being hipsters, confuse Elwy's all-pervading love of the medium with a lack of analytical skill - particularly those who are reviewers or like to think they will someday will be.
Elwy can analyze source material with the best of them - he was the staff psychiatrist at AVRO AEROSPACE before he got into early childhood education and media and educational studies in Ontario - that led to his roles in RAZZLE DAZZLE for CBC Television ( a precursor to his TV ONTARIO show MAGIC SHADOWS). He doesn't do traditional film-school analysis and deconstruction of the films he shows, though. This isn't what he's about. This guy knows his movies emotionally in a transparency that embarrasses a good many of the detail and trivia mongers and auteur-theoreticians that pass for reviewers these days. I love the stories his producer used to tell of the way his complete joix des choses filmatiques (if you'll permit me some bad refried Ottawan Franglais) would utterly flabbergast and charm the celebrities and industry professionals he'd meet.
I'm a fan of KING KONG and of MARX BROTHERS movies and of old RKO INTERNATIONAL movies (like "A YANK GOES TO OXFORD", and "BALL O FIRE" - with Babs Stanwyck as Burlesque dancer "Sugarpuss" O'Shea seducing poor Gary Cooper as a university professor, both equally miscast, but fun as hell) and I have ELWY to thank for this. He showed KONG at least once a year, sometimes more. Most of us in the TV ONTARIO viewing area would have known ANY of this corner of movie making if it wasn't for the jolly old guy with his pipe and ottoman. There's more to him than that, though, still.
I have a copy of ELWY YOST: THE MAN WHO LOVED THE MOVIES which is a documentary about him that was produced upon his TVO retirement and shows him in a screening room with a candid camera having physically emotional reactions to the films he's said he loves the most. He almost completely breaks down with Brando in LAST TANGO IN PARIS. The second he recognises what it is, he's almost audibly dreading the point where Brando opens his heart up to his dead lover. When Brando does, Elwy's right there with him. When the sequence from KONG (which Elwy always cited as his all-time favourite after CITIZEN KANE) comes where he watches the beast set Ann Darrow down for the last time before the planes get him, Elwy's at war with himself between telling the people that are watching it with him that it was really only a 15" doll and just crying openly as the monster hits the ground -just weeping as if he'd seen someone's dog hit by a car. He showed that movie twice a year sometimes, and he'd seen it dozens and dozens of times. Monkey hits the ground and Elwy's already crying, honestly, just considering the sad waste of it.
I was told by a teacher in theatre school a long time ago that "Mankind's greatest infidelity to itself is that the truth is 'corny'..." Elwy is corny and he honestly loves each and every one of those movies.
How can you not love this guy?