Howard_B_Eale

As a viewer who had been bombarded with negative commentary on this film for almost 40 years without having actually viewed it, I suppose I'd drunk the Kool-Aid and assumed that the naysayers were right. But after viewing the Blu-ray (which is a presentation of James Blakely's "unauthorized" re-edit of the film, which he did to amuse himself while working at 20th, and then quietly placed "his" version into TV distribution), I now see how off-base these attacks were.

It's difficult to know, without seeing the 1975 cut, nor the first TV re-edit done by Bogdanovich himself, where the differences in the versions lie (and complicating matters, Bogdanovich was finally able to tighten up bits and pieces and add an entire missing 90-second sequence to the Blakely cut for the Blu-ray). Indeed, seeing the Blakely cut, it's hard to imagine how the trims or changes would have happened at all, as the majority of picture is in long, unbroken shots (beautifully lensed by Laszlo Kovacs). From the occasionally dupey and ragged image quality here evident in the current Blu-ray transfer, it would appear that some numbers were simply discarded entirely in 1975, and replaced by lesser source material by Blakely. The looseness of the structure would have enabled some chess-playing with the sequence of events, but it's hard to imagine the film being truly butchered beyond recognition.

In any event, it's more fruitful to view this film as a very earnest experiment, rather than a "throwback musical". The decision to shoot all the musical numbers live, with the actors not only using their own voices to sing, but doing so on-camera without overdubs, immediately places the entire enterprise in some cinematic twilight zone, out of time, floating weirdly between an era of 1930s Lubitsch and 1970s underground cinema. But, amazingly, it works, in no small part due to the uniformly appealing and earnest cast. Cringe-worthy duff notes aside, even Burt Reynolds pulls it off, and is often genuinely charming in his menage-aux-trois pairings with both Cybill Shepherd and Madeline Kahn. Duilio Del Prete clearly carries his musical numbers with ease, unlike the other three leads, but avoids upstaging them with what is obviously a better-trained singing voice.

Indeed, the film works astonishingly well as an ensemble piece, perfectly suited to the double-entendre-laden Cole Porter tunes around which it is all based. The group sequences in tight quarters, such as the repeated bits in playboy Reynolds' chauffeured limos, are completely charming. The physical comedy is a gentle slapstick, not overly broad.

It doesn't all hang together perfectly. The already-thin narrative feels stretched to the breaking point somewhere around the three-quarters mark, and the whole thing feels a bit long in the tooth at 121 minutes. It's easy to see how mid-1970s audiences would have found the entire enterprise utterly confounding, even after enjoying Bogdanovich's PAPER MOON two years prior. It overreaches, but is no failure.

It appears that some particular IMDb user has rather hopefully indicated that Robert Altman served as co-director on this one-of-a-kind production, but there is no available documentation to back that up. Altman was brought in to write the screenplay, from a story by the film's producer (Elmer Rhoden, Jr.) and director (Robert Woodburn), but it is unquestionably a product of its production team. Such as it is. For all intents and purposes, and hopeless attempts to see the film as presaging NASHVILLE, Robert Altman had little to do with this picture's result. It is strictly an aberration, well outside of his "oeuvre".

This CORN sprang to life as both a showcase for local talent and a long-form commercial for popcorn at the same time. The story is of a local TV "variety hour" sponsored by the Pinwhistle Popcorn company (which, embarrassingly, is only a half hour) hosted by toothsome crooner Johnny Wilson (played by singer Jerry Wallace, in his first, and evidently only, lead role in a feature). Wilson's wallflower 12-year-old sister sings lead vocals for Hobie Shepp and the Cowtown Wranglers, who sporadically perform throughout the picture. But the real pathos concerns poor, struggling Mr. Pinwhistle's ill-fated association with a slimy promoter, Waldo Crummit (a rubber-faced James Lantz) and his utterly talentless singing wife, Lillian Gravelguard (look for the amusing CITIZEN KANE reference in her first television performance), who are conniving back-room deals to "buy popcorn for peanuts".

There's little point in further summarizing the plot here, because the meat of the matter is in the film's staggeringly strange design and equally strange performances (particularly Keith Painton as Pinwhistle, whose particular brand of gesticulating should be the stuff of legend). Ostensibly framed for the 1:1.85 widescreen exhibition of the time, it can only be viewed/projected as full-square 1.37 aperture because of the extreme framing of its subjects. Widescreen would lop off lower halves of bodies while leaving yards of "headroom" up top. As it is, you'll never see a picture with more inadvertent emphasis on fabric curtain rod covers and bizarre paintings hung on set walls. By all accounts, the cinematographer simply didn't have proper guidelines in his camera viewfinder to properly frame for widescreen, and this only lends a uniquely bizarre feel to the whole enterprise, as if the entire production is floating in some strange liminal space.

The other leads in the picture are determined local amateurs who turn in utterly charming and naive performances. Popcorn savior Agatha Quake, as played by Dora Walls, is like an unholy mixture of both witches from Oz; 12-year-old Cora Rice as Johnny Wilson's singing sister steals every scene she's in, playing Greek chorus to on screen shenanigans with aplomb. Every musical number is its own little piece of gold.

Unavailable for decades, and having never had a wide release in the first place, the film has just been restored by the Northwest Chicago Film Society (with funding from the National Film Preservation Foundation) and premiered at UCLA in May, 2014, which is where this reviewer saw it. That its penultimate musical number takes place in outer space on a "trip to Mars" only underscores what a beguiling and utterly unique little picture this is.

What a shockingly rough movie to watch. While there are plenty of clues in the film itself, it's pretty hard to discover who is REALLY behind the movie without digging deep: The Ramtha School of Enlightment (or RSE). RSE is another Scientology-like "cult"-like religion, so BE ADVISED that you are in for a namby-pamby recruiting tool rather than an informative movie if you go to see "What the Bleep Do We Know". The movie: Marlee Matlin mugs and grimaces her way through this horrendously-directed digital atrocity, making for plenty of unintentional and embarrassing laughs as she mouths her dialogue in classic "deaf" accent, surrounded by headache-inducing, often intrusive CGI animation (the entire theme of which is ripped straight from the classic short film "Powers of Ten"). The film presents a universe so perfectly caucasian that when ethnicity is finally portrayed you actually get a WISE BLACK BOY WITH A BASKETBALL (I'm not kidding) and a Native American in full stereotypical feathered head-dress. Matlin's character lives in a faux-industrial yuppie loft (appropriate, considering it was shot in the loft-happy Pacific Northwest) and has a "wacky" artist roommate.

Furthermore, the film is so unsure of itself and its narrative that it winds up playing any attempts at humor with equally broad strokes; within one atrocious set piece (an apparent Polish wedding) there is a "Polack" joke which goes un-challenged, grotesque sub-Pixar CGI creatures running about, "Porky's"-level teen sex gags, an embarrassing "polka" dance number and even a very graphic near-porn moment or two. All of this "legitimized" by the often spaced-out meanderings of various real-life scientists, mystics (yes, mystics), chiropractors and writers, who throw quantum theory at the viewer through a series of impenetrable interviews (and none of the voices are given screen identification until the end of the film). There's even a totally out of place sequence discussing crystals, sure to tickle the new-agers in the audience. It all doesn't add up to a hill of beans in any informational sense... 108 minutes of a handful of simple messages, among them: addiction is bad, right and wrong can get very confused, black children aren't all thugs and monogamy is always for the birds.

Previous cult leaders have made movies before; remember The "Moonies"' Reverend Sun Myung Moon and "Inchon"? At least that was basically just a dull war movie, rather than a blatant recruitment tool for a cult. You have been warned.