Classic 70s Movie: “What’s Up, Doc?”

September is Classic 70s Movie month. Today’s guest post comes from Weston Turner.

Movie Title: What’s Up, Doc?

Year: 1972

Writers: Story by Peter Bogdanovich, Screenplay by Buck Henry and David Newman & Robert Benton

Lead Actors: Barbra Streisand, Ryan O’Neal, Madeline Kahn

Director: Peter Bogdanovich

IMDB Plot Summary: Howard Bannister is a studious, quiet musicologist who dreams of making great discoveries in the world of igneous rocks and their musical properties. His fiancee, Eunice Burns, is overbearing, dramatic and working on training him to be her ideal, more obedient, husband. Their competition for a Musicology research grant brings Howard into the world of carefree, penniless Judy Maxwell and her instant love-at-all-costs attraction to him. This makes his efforts to acquire the research grant infinitely more confusing and complicated, as does the fact that his overnight bag full of rocks looks the same as Judy’s bag full of clothes, which also looks like the bag a woman is using to store her diamonds, which uncannily resembles a bag that contains some illegally-obtained top-secret documents.

Why I Think This Is A Classic 70s Movie: Peter Bodanovich was the prototype for a whole generation of filmmakers that rose to prominence many years after he had become an elder statesman of cinema. He was a movie geek through and through, obsessed with cinema and the pure joy he found in watching and making films. His output could, in many ways, be analyzed through the same lenses used in dissecting the work of Quentin Tarantino and Wes Anderson. There’s many referential, sometimes cheeky, sometimes reverent pastiche-y qualities, of course. But humming underneath that is a manic, punchy, and gleeful energy coursing through every frame. It’s an elusive quality that is impossible for a director to fake and, when it is present, just as impossible for a viewer to ignore.

I think What’s Up Doc? is the culmination of Peter Bogdanovich’s deep adoration for movies and all the ways they can spin a hilarious and hectic yarn. It’s pacing, writing, and direction is refreshingly bold, fun and inventive. “Pure Cinema” is a term that is making a bit of a comeback as Gravity, Under the Skin, and Upstream Colors entered movie fans’ and critics’ discussions. Those examples are science fiction and this is a comedy, but it’s a comedy that embraces the medium even more than usual. It’s re-appropriation of classic screwball characters and sequences is one of genuine love and enthusiasm and they balance it with enough self-awareness to sell us on a screwball comedy that was made years after most had given up on trying to make a great one. Maybe it seemed futile to dedicate so much time and craft into what some would dismiss as “just” an entertaining but slight trifle. It can stand toe-to-toe with the classics of the screwball Golden Age and a lot of that is due to Peter Bogdanovich’s zeal for the genre. He believed in these stories and he knew there are no films that are “just” entertaining or funny or joyful. Those qualities weren’t easy to come by. They emerged from time spent refining the writing, acting, and direction. The 1970s era of American Film has become a hallowed moment in cinema’s history. It’s championed as a time where creativity, experimentation, and film-addicted raw passion flourished. Peter Bogdanovich used that window to make this breathless, sharp, and hilarious tribute to the films he loved. It’s emblematic of that element the best filmmakers of the ’70s carried with them: a undying devotion to the greatness possible in these films.

My Favorite Moment In The Movie: One of the reasons why the jokes land so well and the convoluted story breezily zips along without causing any headaches is that the writers on the film keep devising better, simpler, and more clever ways of playing the jokes into their storytelling. They smuggle the plot devices and exposition into slapstick free-for-all’s and snappy banter.

This is brilliantly executed in the dinner table scene where Howard Bannister meets Mr. Larrabee, a man whom he is desperate to impress. Of course Judy is already three or four steps ahead of him and has been detailing all manner of fictional hijinks in Howard’s name in an attempt to impress the fellow scientists and win Howard’s heart. The only way she could insinuate herself into the conversation so quickly, easily, and deeply she decided to pretend she was Howard’s fiancee, Eunice Burns. The scene is marvelously slippery and fun. It hits all of the conflicts and delightful notes you want it to (Howard’s intellectual stammering exasperation, Judy’s effortless powers of chaos) and then swerves away into turns you did not expect. The elements of tension in the scene are provided by the audience’s expectations. Not only have we had several overlapping conflicts setup to explode in a scene like this, we also have years of screwball filmmaking where scenes like this tend to hit certain key notes. This is not the case here. Mr. Larrabee, whom you might expect to be a stock character that is suspicious of Judy and difficult to win over, turns out to be joyfully smitten with Judy/Eunice. He instantly wants to award Howard the prize, thanks to Judy’s antics. She basically hands Howard what he’s wanted without even trying. A suspicious pompous enemy of Howard’s fails to win the money or cause Howard any trouble at all. Howard’s clumsy attempts to take the reigns of the conversation or situation, anything really, are smoothly dissuaded by Judy’s charms and this all leads to the pivotal moment at the end of this scene.

By now, plenty of hilarious jokes and sight gags have been had and we can see the Howard/Judy storyline gaining traction. We end up with everyone at the table following Howard and Judy in crooking their heads under the table to continue their conversation. Finally, Eunice Burns has managed to push her way into the private dinner just in time to seem like the perfect lunatic before the entire crowd of people. She is violent and screaming and won’t listen to anyone except Howard. Mr. Larrabee asks how Howard knows the “dangerously unbalanced woman”. And from here. the whole movie turns. Howard denies having ever seen her before and, for the first time, takes a stand with Judy against Eunice. The whole movie takes a big turn at this point as he makes a pivotal choice and must now find his way through the consequences.

This is a perfect example of a scene that balances several different styles of comedy and manages to write in the plot dialogue and interactions without either getting drowned out. It’s a masterclass in timing and comedic structure.

Dinner Scene Part 1

Dinner Scene Part 2 (kind of) — “Dangerously Unbalanced”

My Favorite Dialogue In the Movie:

Howard: Sir, my name is Howard Bannister and I’m from Ames, Iowa.
Judge Maxwell: No excuse.
Howard: No, sir, it all started when I bumped my head in the taxi… on the way in from the airport.
Judge Maxwell: Are you pleading insanity or amnesia?
Howard: Neither. I went to the drugstore to get something for a headache… the druggist tried to charge me for a radio. She said her husband would pay for it. But I didn’t, of course.
Judge Maxwell: Of course.
Howard: She ripped my jacket and when Eunice came along…
Judge Maxwell: Who’s Eunice?
Howard: Eunice is my fiancée.
Judge Maxwell: You have a wife AND a fiancée?
Howard: No, sir. But, she kept calling me “Steve.”
Judge Maxwell: Your own fiancée calls you “Steve?”
Howard: No, sir, my wife. Or rather, the one who ISN’T my wife.
Judge Maxwell: What does the one who isn’t your FIANCEE call you? Howard?
Howard: No, sir, the one who isn’t my fiancée doesn’t call me Howard and the one who isn’t my wife doesn’t call me Howard because the one who isn’t my fiancée is also the one who isn’t my wife. The other one who ISN’T my wife, the one who IS my fiancée… she doesn’t call me “Steve.” She calls me Howard. Do you see?
Judge Maxwell: Let’s just skip over this part, and move on.
Howard: That night at the banquet she was there again.
Judge Maxwell: Who was there, your wife or your fiancée?
Howard: Neither.
Judge Maxwell: There’s a third?
Howard: No, sir, the one who isn’t either. Everyone was calling her “Burnsy.”
Judge Maxwell: Why?
Howard: That’s short for Burns, Eunice’s last name.
Judge Maxwell: Eunice WAS there.
Howard: No, sir, BURNSY was there. Or rather, the one who ISN’T Burnsy.

Key Things You Should Look For When Watching This Movie:

Visual Comedy Grammar — This movie is chock full of all the filmmaking tricks you can imagine. There’s a car chase that rivals the Diapers Sequence in Raising Arizona. It has all of the standard tropes of a car chase but they’re either subverted or pushed to further absurdist extremes. The mirror, the concrete, the ending on the deck: they’re all so funny and thrilling because the director and writers love them as much as we do and also know, as much as we do, how played out they are. This leads to great effort being expended in putting a unique spin or punchline to the proceedings. On many occasions, the camera is as playful as the script: it reveals things to us in frame when it’s funniest to do so, it uses odd shaped furniture for laughs, and it has a blast with the door-slamming, towel-wearing, fire-starting, and balcony-standing.

Verbal Comedy Grammar — This whole film would be well worth studying for the dialogue fireworks alone. It doesn’t have the caustic wit of Billy Wilder, but it has the sense of oneupmanship and play that fuel comedy so well. It’s fascinating to see how even the characters you’re rooting for still have competing interests. It makes every scene a situation that has to be resolved in a funny way. The dialogue includes rapid back-and-forth, overlap, setup/punchline, and all of it springs from well drawn characters with clear conflicts. They can be as clever as they want, because we know these characters, and we can see the sparks as two opposing stubborn characters get in the way of what the other one wants. It demonstrates how the time and craft we put into the characters pays off and will only make the comedy land harder.

Thanks, Weston! To show our gratitude for your guest post, here’s a dash of creative juju for you. Whoosh!

You may follow Weston on Twitter: @LogicDamaged.

We already have a set of 80s Movies and 90s Movies. This month, we’re working on 70s Movies.

Thanks to all of you for your participation in this project, creating a resource for writers, movies we should all watch to help learn the craft of screenwriting!

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