As Shirley MacLaine says in Rumor Has It, "Everyone needs someone in their life to let them know when youth has come to an end." For Anthony Quinn, that someone was Stanley Kramer, a director whom I normally love. Fresh off their success of The Secret of Santa Vittoria, Kramer cast Quinn as a middle-aged professor in R. P. M., standing for "Revolutions Per Minute". Quinn plays the "cool" professor who beds his students, rides a motorcycle, and talks with modern slang. When a group of protesting hippies take over the administration building and give "demands" as they hold the college's computer system hostage, an emergency board meeting is called and Quinn is sent as a mediator since the kids like him.
But here's the insulting part of the film, why dear vibrant, sexy Tony should never have taken the part: he's shown as over-the-hill and unable to relate to the wild generation. He wears reading glasses, he takes terrible insults from the students, and his girlfriend tells him "Pull in your gut" when he walks around naked. (Sorry ladies, he's given a flesh-colored thong to protect his modesty.) One could argue that he's still young and hip enough to go to bed with Ann-Margret, but as the movie progresses, the students are so disrespectful, they show the real generation gap: manners and decency. Even though Tony doesn't agree with the kids, he still tries to treat them with respect, but the angry, protesting teenagers don't give him the same courtesy.
There will be a large chunk of audience members who side with the teenagers, and that makes me both sad and disgusted. Manners never go out of style, and using them doesn't show weakness or inflexibility. It shows class, the ability to see the bigger picture, and maturity. Tony may belong to the older generation with graying hair and a growing tummy, but I'll happily join him any day of the week.
