Who is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me (1971, Ulu Grosbard)

Unfortunately, a mostly terrible film with an equally terrible title, I'd wanted to see this initial film collaboration between Ulu Grosbard and Dustin Hoffman for years.  I was finally able to scratch this itch with the surprising DVD release of the film by CBS (by way of Paramount Home Media). Hoffman's folk music hero (a la Dylan) Georgie Soloway is just about his least convincing screen performance.  Where Grosbard and Hoffman effectively combined their talents years later on Straight Time, transforming Hoffman into hardened criminal Max Dembo, they fail spectacularly with Harry Kellerman.  The movie mostly takes place in the frazzled mind of suicidal Georgie, as he encounters family, friends, employees, and his mostly useless Austrian shrink (Jack Warden) and employs some arty, non-linear editing techniques, which will be familiar to students of both New Waves, European and American.  It is, of course, not entirely clear which meetings are actually occurring and which occur only in Georgie's head.  

The lone bright spots are the early '70s footage of New York City, which includes early morning aerial footage of the skyline, with the World Trade Center under construction (in the film, we see 1 tower partially constructed, with no sign of the other), and Barbara Harris' Oscar-nominated role, which amounts to 2 scenes.

The goofy DVD cover, which appears to be trying to evoke Napolean Dynamite's marketing campaign, includes an image that does not appear in the film.  I initially thought it was a photoshop job, but then considered that it might have come from a publicity still.  Sure enough...

Now that CBS and Paramount have released Harry Kellerman, The April Fools, and The War Between Men and Women, please, please give us The Challenge and Darker Than Amber, both titles in the CBS library, which remain unavailable on DVD in any region.

In another sign of our increasing prudishness when it comes to all things sex, the film which features a couple scenes of brief nudity, has been re-rated for the new DVD from GP (pre-cursor to PG) to R.

A final note: my mother met and spoke with Rose Gregorio (Mrs. Ulu Grosbard) at the hair salon a few months ago.  Rose told her a great anecdote about The Swimmer (which the actress appears in) after Mom related to her that I was a big fan of that film.  Here, she appears in a few scenes as the former Mrs. Kellerman.  Rose was quite good in Frank Perry's Dummy, which I wrote about earlier.

Films Within Films: Roy Scheider

Jaws, co-starring Roy Scheider, appears in Marathon Man, co-starring Roy Scheider, by way of a movie marquee.  The theater is the long-gone Rivoli.

Trailer Not on the DVD: Tootsie (1982, Sidney Pollack)

The 30th anniversary of Sidney Pollack's quintessential NYC-set comedy is rapidly approaching.  So, what better excuse is there to showcase this trailer (or, perhaps it's a teaser) which does not appear on the DVD.  The voice-over is performed by director (and supporting player) Pollack.

As per many Sony discs, there is no trailer for the feature presentation, but you can usually count on some "related" trailers being included; these are often not even original theatrical trailers, but rather latter-day made-for-DVD ones:

No Beast So Fierce

Long one of my favorite films of the '70s ever since I saw the big clamshell box, with a picture of Dustin Hoffman's hairy mug, sitting on my video store shelf, Straight Time remains criminally under exposed. This was remedied somewhat by the DVD that was released a few years back, before Warner Bros. abandoned the idea of pressed catalog DVD releases. Based upon on criminal-turned-author Eddie Bunker's semi-autobiographical first novel, No Beast So Fierce, the property is one of the few that I think was actually better served by the film than the book.

Originally slated to direct and star in Straight Time, Hoffman eventually ceded directorial reins to old friend Ulu Grosbard (who directed Hoffman in Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me?) after determining that the twin stresses of starring in and mounting a production were too much for him to handle on his own. Later, Hoffman sued production company First Artists and distributor Warner Bros. for illegally taking the right of final cut from him. As it stands, Straight Time is pretty damn riveting cinema and it seems that Hoffman has finally come around to this fact, as he participated in an audio commentary on the DVD and, several years earlier, appeared at a screening held by the phantom-like "Movie Club." At that time, Hoffman revealed that a famous scene involving a very public de-pantsing of co-star M. Emmet Walsh was based upon one of Hoffman's painful childhood memories.

I wonder if the below picture pre-dates star Dustin Hoffman's abandonment of directing duties on Straight Time. Great still regardless. Looks like bigger crowds showed up for the shooting of the film than to actually see the film.

I can't find any evidence of the still online, but, IIRC, in John Willis' Screen World from 1979 (each volume featured the previous year's films), there was an image of a fully dressed Max Dembo (Hoffman) laying on the sand with a bikini-clad Jenny Mercer (Theresa Russell). I imagine it's one of many Hoffman-shot scenes that did not end up in the final picture. If they still existed in some form, I would have loved to have seen these on the DVD.