OF ALICES AND RESTAURANTS
Recently TCM ran a block of movies that all had the word "Alice" in the title. I recorded two of these Alice movies: "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore" (1974) and "Alice's Restaurant" (1969) (movies which, I have to admit, I've gotten confused as long as I've known about them -- I may even have thought they were the same movie at some point). "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore" is an Academy Award-winning movie starring Ellen Burstyn and which was turned into the TV sitcom, "Alice." It was also Martin Scorsese's first major studio movie. "Alice's Restaurant" is the movie based on Arlo Guthrie's song of the same title, starring Arlo Guthrie and directed by Arthur Penn (who had made "Bonnie and Clyde" a couple of years before). I didn't care for Ellen Burstyn, but I LOVED Arlo.
"Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore" is just long and annoying, with the dull Kris Kristofferson as the love interest. (I never understood the whole KK-as-sex-symbol thing. He just doesn't do a thing for me.) You'd never guess this was a Scorsese film, except for the small (terrifying) part by Harvey Keitel, who is just brilliant. He's so young and handsome and clean-cut in this that I wasn't even sure it was him at first. The movie only really comes alive when Keitel or Diane Ladd (who plays Flo) (...who, by the way, never says "Kiss my grits") are on screen. My four-word recap: it was really long. Ellen Burstyn is so much better in other roles. I particularly love her in "The Last Picture Show."
"Alice's Restaurant" was ALSO really long. Too long. It was a movie-length version of Arlo Guthrie's hit song of the late-'60s -- the song itself is over 18 minutes long, so perhaps Penn felt he needed to compensate by throwing in a bunch of soap opera stuff to pad the thing out to two and a half hours, or whatever it was. I don't think I'd ever heard the song all the way through before. I had no idea it was so long. It was about an actual ridiculous event where Guthrie got busted in Massachusetts for LITTERING which, bizarrely, prevented him from being drafted. The song is basically a monologue, and it's very funny. It's an amazing achievement for an 18- or 19-year-old songwriter (but it's the sort of thing people might unfairly expect from the son of the legendary Woody Guthrie). Yeah, the movie drags, but Arlo carries it. He can't really act, but he's so appealing and sweet (and cute) that you really miss it when he's not on screen. The scenes involving the draft board are funny, and M. Emmett Walsh is great, as always. There are several scenes of Arlo visiting his father in the hospital, and, for me, those scenes were where the real soul of the film was. At one point Pete Seeger (playing himself) is playing and singing at Woody's bedside, and even though I've never been much of a Pete Seeger fan, it's a wonderful scene. (Woody Guthrie died not long after the events in the song, and he is played by an actor who gives a wrenching performance without saying a single word.) I liked the movie a lot more than I thought I would. I'm not a fan of hippie culture, but Arlo made it all worth while.
Arlo
Woody and Arlo Guthrie, in Woody's last years
One of the things I wondered about in the movie, was a car one of the characters was driving. Here's a picture of it:
It was such a weird-looking vehicle. Thanks to the wonder that is the internet, I now know that it is what those in the mortuary trade would instantly recognize as something called a "flower car." I ALSO learned that there is something called IMCDB -- the Internet Movie Cars Database
So there you go.
"Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore" is just long and annoying, with the dull Kris Kristofferson as the love interest. (I never understood the whole KK-as-sex-symbol thing. He just doesn't do a thing for me.) You'd never guess this was a Scorsese film, except for the small (terrifying) part by Harvey Keitel, who is just brilliant. He's so young and handsome and clean-cut in this that I wasn't even sure it was him at first. The movie only really comes alive when Keitel or Diane Ladd (who plays Flo) (...who, by the way, never says "Kiss my grits") are on screen. My four-word recap: it was really long. Ellen Burstyn is so much better in other roles. I particularly love her in "The Last Picture Show."
"Alice's Restaurant" was ALSO really long. Too long. It was a movie-length version of Arlo Guthrie's hit song of the late-'60s -- the song itself is over 18 minutes long, so perhaps Penn felt he needed to compensate by throwing in a bunch of soap opera stuff to pad the thing out to two and a half hours, or whatever it was. I don't think I'd ever heard the song all the way through before. I had no idea it was so long. It was about an actual ridiculous event where Guthrie got busted in Massachusetts for LITTERING which, bizarrely, prevented him from being drafted. The song is basically a monologue, and it's very funny. It's an amazing achievement for an 18- or 19-year-old songwriter (but it's the sort of thing people might unfairly expect from the son of the legendary Woody Guthrie). Yeah, the movie drags, but Arlo carries it. He can't really act, but he's so appealing and sweet (and cute) that you really miss it when he's not on screen. The scenes involving the draft board are funny, and M. Emmett Walsh is great, as always. There are several scenes of Arlo visiting his father in the hospital, and, for me, those scenes were where the real soul of the film was. At one point Pete Seeger (playing himself) is playing and singing at Woody's bedside, and even though I've never been much of a Pete Seeger fan, it's a wonderful scene. (Woody Guthrie died not long after the events in the song, and he is played by an actor who gives a wrenching performance without saying a single word.) I liked the movie a lot more than I thought I would. I'm not a fan of hippie culture, but Arlo made it all worth while.
Arlo
Woody and Arlo Guthrie, in Woody's last years
One of the things I wondered about in the movie, was a car one of the characters was driving. Here's a picture of it:
It was such a weird-looking vehicle. Thanks to the wonder that is the internet, I now know that it is what those in the mortuary trade would instantly recognize as something called a "flower car." I ALSO learned that there is something called IMCDB -- the Internet Movie Cars Database
So there you go.