Impara a conoscere il tuo coniglio

One of Brian De Palma's least-known films - also one of his least-successful. The premise is actually relateable and plausible in its absurdity (corporate executive quits his job to pursue his dream of becoming a tap-dancing magician!), but the film does very little with it. It's also hopelessly unfunny. Occasional use of split-screen is just about the only indication of De Palma's later virtuosity. Orson Welles is at least enjoying himself performing magic tricks, while Katharine Ross is indeed "a terrific-looking girl". *1/2 out of 4.

Get to Know Your Rabbit remains to this day one of the hardest of Brian De Palma's films to track down on video (it was released in the 80s, never on DVD), but it may be understandable as to why. It has no real "name" stars save for Orson Welles and maybe Katharine Ross (Tom Smothers is a Smothers brother, so there's that, but they're not well known today), and it hasn't really found an audience for itself as a cult film like Hi, Mom or Phantom of Paradise (arguably still De Palma's best satires). It's an oddity of a find, and not just because of its title or cover art. This movie is just a big bag of weird, but there's enough that makes it work, and enough that's funny, to say that it's worth trying to find if you are one of those movie geeks that likes to track down every work, minor or otherwise, a particular director has made.

It's about, in the simplest of terms (as if in a pitch) a businessman played by Smothers decides to leave his mundane job to become a magician- and not just that, but a tap-dancing magician tutored by the great Delasandro. He breaks up with his kind of bi-polar girlfriend and gets his magician "license", traveling on the road - but then an old boss at his old job is broke and in trouble, and then gets to idea to market him... with insane results. Everything with Orson Welles is golden, pure awesome, and there's some really inspired camera tricks even for De Palma (of course we get split-screen but there's other stuff as well that will surprise you). But what works for the movie best is also it's biggest 'what-the-hell' factor: the script. This is such an original piece of work that one can see why De Palma, working from the material or creating and building on it more, got fired towards the end of production: one cannot imagine a studio like Warner Brothers bankrolled or OK'd what this movie is, which is an insane and kind of jolly satire on magicians and corporate interests.

But, for all its faults (and some of it is just the mind-boggling kind), it's very entertaining, maybe more than it has any right to be. It's not a "holy-grail" lost gem, and at the same time you wont hopefully feel too cheated if you already like De Palma's warped sense of humor, especially in his pre-Carrie days.

Ironically, Brian De Palma's GET TO KNOW YOUR RABBIT... an anti-corporate, counter-culture comedy... is a lot like the previous decade's I'LL NEVER FORGET WHAT'S'ISNAME, and both feature Orson Welles, first as a boss who doesn't want to lose his top young employee and here a magic instructor that this film's star, Tom Smothers of Smothers Brothers fame, takes lessons from after quitting his job as executive John Astin's problem-solving underling...

Welles has a total of ten-minutes screen-time, and upon graduation asks Smothers' Donald Beeman if he had been like a father to him, wherein Tommy's expression... the signature dimwitted naiveté more of an irked, stonewall glib... shakes his head, "No" which is one of several problems since this offbeat character, played by an offbeat comic actor on his own, doesn't seem game for this particularly strange and completely random road comedy...

Replete with episodic beyond plot-driven scenarios, especially from Smothers (turned into a sex symbol here) bedding various hot girlfriends, from moody nymph Susanne Zenor to perfect magician's assistant Katharine Ross... and yet no matter who or what passes through... from quirky character-actors Allen Garfield to M. Emmett Walsh but mostly the corporate-comeback-seeking Astin... RABBIT gets weirder for the sake of not being typical...

Which it's obviously fighting against as director De Palma was still in 1960's hippie-dropout GREETINGS to HI, MOM mode before resurrecting Hitchcock-horror beginning with SISTERS the next year... plus there's a relaxing quality to Smothers, a pretty good pawn if lazy leading man, going from location to location... but since everything's so extremely surreal, it all winds up feeling rather ordinary and mundane somehow.

'Get to Know Your Rabbit' is far from a great movie, but it's a quirky film that tells an unusual story in an original way. Best of all, there's a very sexy performance by Katharine Ross, plus good performances by Orson Welles and several other cast members. I'm surprised that this hasn't become a cult movie. (One of the cast members is Allen Garfield: there seems to be an unwritten commandment that every movie with Allen Garfield in the cast must develop a cult following.)

Rising young executive Donald Beeman (Tommy Smothers) abruptly decides that high wages and corporate prestige are not what he really wants, so he quits his job with high-powered boss Turnbull (the brilliant John Astin) and sets forth in a new career as a tap-dancing magician, mentored by the mysterious Dell'assandro (Orson Welles, giving one of the best performances of his career as a dodgy parlour-tricks conjuror: a role which is clearly dear to Welles's heart). Dell'assandro tutors Beeman in the rules of magic: the title of this movie is one of his trade secrets.

There aren't a lot of job opportunities for tap-dancing magicians, so Donald performs his act in seedy little nightclubs and juke joints all over the country. The production quality is slipshod all through this film: throughout the movie, Donald is supposed to be performing in many different venues, but it's obvious that all of these sequences were filmed on the same set. The idea of someone tap-dancing and performing magic tricks both at once is very funny, but this film drops the gag. In one sequence, we see Dell'assandro (played in this shot by Welles's body double, with his back to the camera) tutoring a roomful of students in the dual art of conjuring and tap-dancing simultaneously ... this would have been very funny if Welles's double and the others were actually tap-dancing: instead, they're just clomping up and down in crude unison while they do some very simple tricks with handkerchiefs and rings.

While Donald takes his act on the road, he meets a gorgeous young woman who takes a romantic interest in him, and vice versa. She is played by Katharine Ross, who is meltingly beautiful here ... and wearing one of the sexiest outfits I've ever seen on any woman, anywhere, in any film. The only flaw in her outfit is a ridiculous pair of floral-print hot pants: she'd look a lot sexier if she got rid of those hot pants. (Phworr!) Ross gives a good performance but her role is badly and thinly written. Her character doesn't seem to be a person in her own right: she only seems to exist to fulfil Donald's romantic fantasies of having a girlfriend. The fact that Ross's character has no name (she's listed in the credits as 'the terrific-looking girl') only emphasises the skimpiness of her character.

John Astin gives a brilliant performance, hilarious and yet touching, as Donald's boss whose business fails after Donald's departure, and who attempts to start his executive career all over again with only a desk and a paper clip. The scene in which Astin explains the significance of a paper clip to Tommy Smothers is truly a splendid piece of acting, with Astin balancing comedy and pathos remarkably. When I met John Astin (at the dedication ceremony of the Lucille Lortel Theatre, in New York City) he told me that this was one of his favourite roles.

There are good performances by George Ives (whom I fondly recall from the 'Mister Roberts' TV series) and King Moody in small roles, and a splendidly deadpan performance by Bob Einstein (the under-rated brother of the over-rated Albert Brooks). There's also a very fine performance by veteran character actor Charles Lane as Smothers's father. Lane gave small but gem-like performances in a huge number of important films (the opening shot in 'Mr Smith Goes to Washington' is a close-up of Charles Lane ... and that one shot is Lane's entire part in the film) but he gives one of his best performances here. Unfortunately, Tommy Smothers is only barely competent as the story's central character. Smothers was never one of my favourite comedians, yet I recognise his considerable skill as a comedian and a musician. But he's no actor, and the casting of Smothers in the lead role seriously compromises this movie.

I usually dislike Brian De Palma's movies, due to his penchant of 'borrowing' images and devices from much more talented directors. 'Get to Know Your Rabbit' is one of De Palma's more original efforts, and so it's one of his better films. (I've heard an unconfirmed rumour that De Palma directed less than half of this film.) There's one pretentious camera angle early in the movie, pointing straight down from the ceiling of Donald Beeman's flat, to show Tommy Smothers as a prisoner in a labyrinth ... but it raises a laugh and it's valid to the character on screen.

Katharine Ross is incredibly sexy in this movie, but she has almost nothing to do except stand there and look sexy. I'll rate 'Get to Know Your Rabbit' 4 points out of 10.

This is one of those notorious films in which Orson Welles agreed to play a part because he needed money badly, and here he submits himself to maybe the silliest plot in his life. He is the manager of a queer school for stepping magicians, and could you possibly imagine anything more silly than a stepping magician? Nevertheless, this is a comedy and it constantly grows more hilarious. John Astin is the personal manager of Tommy Smothers, and his character is very similar to that of Gomez in the Addams family of the 60s - you recognize him immediately. What saves the film though is Katherine Ross, always a joy to behold on the screen, and here she enters just in time for the comical climax of the film. It's very unusual to encounter a comedy by Brian de Palma, but you recognize his special cinematographic style immediately. The comedy is absurd, but it definitely succeeds in making you laugh and heartily, for the silliness of the intrigue and its complications transcends all limits of reason while at the same time it consistently remains realistic, as Tommy Smothers actually succeeds in remaining dead serious all through in his absurd mission. It's a kind of Buster Keaton sort of comedy, all dreadfully laughable without the main character ever losing his face.