Phillim212

Must be nice to be a cult figure adored for playing eccentrics, and they call you and offer you money to appear in a film and they are afraid to not let you do whatever you want -- and so you don't even bother to create a character, find a personal connection, demand a script that is actually a script -- you just show up day after day and breeze through repetitively and mindlessly because your character is a cypher. (Not for nothing, but a self-identified straight actor presenting a tired, lazy cliche stereotype of an effeminate homosexual, neglecting to investigate the human being behind it -- that's just boring and ignorant, and not a little bit ugly.) Why is there a barely developed script? Because the writer and director were both assistants to Stanley Kubrick, and Stanley Kubrick is who the main character in this film impersonates -- and Stanley Kubrick's former assistants don't feel the need to provide much context or depth in this film, because apparently they assume the audience have the same automatic engagement with the subject as if they had all spent time immersed in the great man's sphere, thus they decided a fully imagined script would be superfluous, or something. I imagine they had a good laugh making this film, because it reminded them of that crazy time in their rarefied world, none of which they share with the audience. The real narcissists, the real delusionals in this movie are its creators . . .

The *highly* under-rated George Maharis, as Buz, rhapsodizes, in thrilling detail, about old movies, as he tries to inspire frumpy little nice-guy Sorrell Booke to man up and meet his fantasy telephone lover. Sterling Silliphant took television writing seriously. All that and old Chicago locations -- and wicked jokes: "The gas station attendant says 'you haven't lived until you've seen Wisconsin' . . ."

Sterling Silliphant's teleplay for this episode soars with the angels. Young men pursuing a vision of freedom and authenticity, and the other young men who are jealous of them, but then envy them, and the young women who love them and study them to learn who they might capture them, Innovative stuff for 1962. "Look for me under the sun -- I'll be there . . ."