Ya eres un hombre

One of the few times when the late Elizabeth Hartman gets to play as somebody other than a frail, mousy girl. Since her Oscar Nominated performance in "A Patch of Blue," Hollywood always seemed to want her to play vulnerable, handicapped women, or vulnerable women of some sort. This time, she plays a bitchy, egotistical, man-hating actress/go-go dancer, who wins the heart of a young library clerk, played by Peter Kastner. The kind of character, who could probably be the inspiration for a riot grrrl band.

Besides that, I'm a Native New Yorker, so I've got a natural attraction for movies filmed in New York City, and the rest of the tri-state area. Biff Rules!

I wrote the novel upon which this film was based, I worked on the various scripts with Francis, and I was present throughout the filming in New York. An amazing experience. Coppola had been working for a year with MGM writing scripts for them (he had got this job as a result of winning a nationwide literary competition) and had scripted Is Paris Burning? and Patton Lust For Glory, both of which Gore Vidal was supposed to be writing but Coppola travelled to Paris to help get scripts out of him. He had also written the screenplay of This Property Is Condemned, based on a Tennessee Williams short story, and (apart from the magnificent helicopter shot which starts the film) thought very little of it.

For full details of the filming of this first real Coppola movie see my memoirs Dropping Names which is available from my website www.davidbenedictus.com Oh and by the way clips of Dementia 13 which Coppola filmed in a couple of weeks in Ireland (he mentioned to me some nudie films which he may or may not have directed but Dementia 13 is probably his first acknowledged work) are used several times throughout You're A Big Boy Now (I imagine he didn't have to pay copyright on them!) and they look powerful to me.

A sad memory is that Elizabeth Hartman who plays the sexy man-hater with great precision and style was to have a serious nervous breakdown after the end of her marriage and threw herself out of a window to her death. She was some actress and you may have seen her in The group and A Patch Of Blue (opposite Sydney Poitier)

Peter Kastner passed away at the age of 64, of a heart attack in Toronto, Ontario, where he had been living for a few years with second wife Jenny. He had been performing his original songs and playing the guitar and banjo in clubs. He is on You Tube, just type in his name. He will be sadly missed.

Besides his wife, he leaves behind a stepdaughter and 2 grandsons.

There is a Toronto Star obituary that contains a number of untruths about him, and which his wife has corrected in the Toronto Star online.

Mr. Kastner was a very creative person, and at one point was an English teacher & mentor to his students. He was the oldest of four siblings, who have all been creative in some way.

What we have here is an early F.F.C. effort (he also wrote most of the screenplay).You can see the genius that is later to come.

Here's a confused, virginal young man, constantly picked on by his over-bearing parents, trying to find his way in the world of New York City. Bernard is his name and just watch what he does with initials he spots.

The gal that wants him he doesn't want, and the gal that he wants doesn't want him. Got it straight? No wonder this is turning into a "cult" film.

The acting is first rate in a lot of places. Geraldine Page is always great and Rip Torn can handle most roles. Julie Harris was "perfect" as Mrs. Thing (honest, that's her name). Speaking of names, the part played by Lisa Hartman is Barbara Darling, a would-be actress who dances in a go-go club at night.

Watching Bernard weave his way through conniving co-workers and the strange behavior of Miz Darling, is worth the price of admission.

I always wonder who writes these critiques for IMDB, and should I trust them? For that reason,I'd like you all to know that I am a male senior citizen, but this movie made me feel 18 again. You'll find yourself running into similar things that happened to you in your youthful pursuits.

You could do a lot worse taking a chance on a movie.

About 15 minutes into this quirky film I was ready to proclaim it a must see and to bill it as the best movie no one has seen or even heard about. After all it was Coppola's masters thesis for film school. It has Elizabeth Hartman successfully playing against type as a sexy (somewhat psycho) Greenwich Village ingénue. It has Peter Kastner, Rip Torn, Geraldine Page and Julie Harris playing characters more bizarre than anything in "Harold and Maude" (it reminds you a lot of that film and may have inspired it). It has Karen Black doing a toned down version of the Rayette Dipesto character she would play in "Five Easy Pieces". It has a lively sound track by the Lovin' Spoonful. It even has Coppola cutting in extensive gruesome footage from his first film "Dementia 13".

Unfortunately by the halfway point of "You're a Big Boy Now" it totally runs out of steam and you begin to understand that its obscurity is well-deserved. Coppola's script is the problem because the cast are generally excellent and you can tell they had a lot of fun making the film. Even minor cast members like Dolph Sweet do a good job and there are great little sequences like Kastner's after dark explorations of the New York City streets. But unlike "Herald and Maude", Coppola says nothing with this film; consequently it ends up as a classic case of the whole being considerably less than the sum of its parts.

I am not in love with Coppola as a director, but even those who are will acknowledge the incredible distance between his good stuff and the vast majority of his films. This is not his good stuff but is worth checking out if you like Hartman, Harris, and Page.