Brain Donors

Brain Donors (Dennis Dugan, 1992) This one had been shuffled to the back-burners of my mind.  I remember it being released and that it was a zany comedy featuring, of all people, John Turturro.  But, in the training class I was in, my love of movies "got around," and intense discussions of films, past and present, started dominating break conversations.  One of my fellow trainees, with an "intense" collection of DVD's—mostly Criterion foreign films—asked if I'd seen Brain Donors (mostly because of my "off" sense of humor), and, no, I hadn't.  It sounded dumb, but funny and a rare DVD was exchanged.

Writer Pat Proft had done quite a bit of work with the Zucker Brothers on the "Naked Gun," and "Hot Shots" series (and, lest we forget, he also wrote the "Star Wars Holiday Special") and they helped produce this weird comedy hybrid of Monty Python and the Brothers Marx and the Stooges Three, but primarily the Marxian doctrine of being insane in an unfair, yet sane world.  Based somewhat on A Night at the Opera (which is acknowledged in the credits), it's about three misfits—lawyer Roland T. Flakfizer (Turturro), Jacques (Bob Nelson) and Rocco Melonchek (Mel Smith)—who conspire to run a ballet company under the nose of the patron's lawyer, who has designs on the rest of the recently-deceased man's estate (not that Flakfizer's motives are any more pure).  

It's hit-and-miss, scatter-shot and ADHD-paced, acknowledging its roots, while also being more of a piece than Proft's other parody films.  Turturro is so aggressively trying to be funny—Groucho was always a much-easier performer—you can almost hear tires screech when he turns a comedic corner, and the other performers—Smith, as a rough Australian, amiably plays 'the ethnic," ala Chico, and Nelson, who manages to straddle the "Harpo" fields of anticness and sweetness—manage to maintain the integrity of their characters, while choreographing around each other very nimbly and at top speed.

For recycled material, it's not bad, although much more ribald than the Marx Brothers could suggest (and thereby seeming less clever).  But, although the story is very familiar, the deviltry (as with the Marxes) is in the details, and there's more than enough cleverness among the witlessness to make it worth watching.  It does generate several laughs.
  

A Night at the Opera

A Night at the Opera (Sam Wood, 1935) A career resuscitation for the zany Marx Brothers (or 3/4 of them—Zeppo does not make the studio transition with brothers Groucho, Harpo, and Chico), this was the first film made with the boys under their new contract with M-G-M, under the tutelage of Irving Thalberg. It was Thalberg's bright idea to take the Vaudeville vets back to Square One—back to the hit-days of The Cocoanuts, as they play glorified Rosencrantz's and Guildensterns to a couple of love-crazy kids for whom life is throwing a cold shower. It rather douses the film, as well, and softening the brothers' hellz-a-poppin' approach of the latter Paramount films. Unlike their previous film, Duck Soup, anarchy does not reign, but merely drizzles a little, getting the floor wet enough to allow the "bad guys" and authority figures to slip and fall.

I prefer the latter, where the focus is on the insanity of the brothers intruding on the niceties of the real world, with only rare interludes into unmolested cinema "reality."  It was a nice satiric touch to make them the heads of a small bankrupt nation who aspire to greatness (and economic recovery) by going to war,* and the send-up's of blind patriotism ring true in any decade.

Sadly, at the time, that didn't translate into boffo box-office, Thalberg's view of Duck Soup's drop in attendance was "there was no one to root for" (translation: anyone normal) so, starting with this film, the percentages were reversed.  There are lulls of song between the comedy bits, appropriate given the opera background of the story, giving breathing spaces to let audiences catch their collective breath—the kinds of interludes that prompted Groucho (in the film Horse Feathers**) to break the fourth wall to turn to the cinema audience and grouse: "I have to stay, but that's no reason the rest of you can't go to the lobby for a quick smoke or something!"

A Night at the Opera (written by George S. Kaufman, Morrie Ryskind, Al Boasberg, and, reportedly, the great Buster Keaton) sees Groucho as false-impressario Otis P. Driftwood, under contract and slightly under-thumb of society-craving Mrs. Claypool (Margaret Dumont).  Chico is the manager of Riccardo (Allan Jones), who aspires to opera stardom and is in love with Rosa (Miss Kitty Carlisle—as she was known as a panelist on "To Tell the Truth").  Harpo is the dresser of Lassparri (Walter Woolf King), a gas-bag opera star,who also has designs on Rosa.  Immediately it becomes a case of clashing egos, thwarted love and abuse of power and entitlement, perfect diva-size targets for the Marxes to lampoon.  It's safe and sane, such a pity.  But, there is enough rich material to satisfy Marx Brothers fans.

And, thanks to the wonders of technology, you can skip over the other parts if you so desire.***  Where's my remote?  (Probably under Mrs. Claypool)

Still, one must be grateful.  Half a classic film is better than no classic at all. 

* Mussolini took Duck Soup as a personal insult and had it banned in Italy.

** Did it ever occur to you that the titles for the first Marx Brothers films (except for The Cocoanuts)  could be euphmisms for "Bull-shit?" Well, it certainly occurred to me!

*** In his review of A Night at the Opera, Roger Ebert says that is exactly what he does.

Don't Make a Scene: Horse Feathers

The Set-Up: Aaron Brown, the newscaster, said that while recovering from an early heart attack, he used Marx Brothers movies as therapy. If laughter is the best medicine, the Marx Brothers are a miracle drug. Decades after their movies were produced, they are still shining examples of humor that communicates over the passage of time. The four Marx Brothers--Groucho, Chico, Harpo, and Zeppo--made some of the funniest, if some of the most un-cinematic movies ever produced. You didn't need fancy camera set-ups. Just keep the boys in frame (if possible) and you had comedy gold. Their physical comedy and their crack timing with gags (unreproducible here, unfortunately) keep the routines laugh out loud funny. But they are also anarchic spirits in a corrupt world. Their heightened absurdity and tortured logic confuse the best-laid schemes of crooks and swindlers, while allowing the free passage of true love. That's how it worked in the movies, anyway. The Marxes were road-blocks to business-as-usual, and they could be counted on to disrupt any example of civilization known to man. Someday, I'll reproduce the first ten minutes of "Horse Feathers"--my favorite Marx Brothers movie--but for now, the perfect zaniness of the "Swordfish" scene will suffice.

The Story: Huxley College is in dire financial trouble, so to guarantee its future success college president Professor Quincey Adams Wagstaff (Groucho Marx) goes to the local speakeasy to recruit football players to play for the college, students or no. But first, he has to get by speakeasy employee Baravelli (Chico Marx) who won't let just anybody in. Action!



Nick: Hey, Bareveliii!
Baravelli: What do you want?
Nick: Watch the door for a few minutes and don’t let anyone in without the password.
Baravelli: Okay, what is it?
Nick: "Swordfish" is the password, do you understand?
Baravelli: Okay, I got it.
Nick: Well, what is it?
Baravelli: Password.
Nick: "Swordfish!" "Swordfish!"

Baravelli: Alright! "Swordfish!" "Swordfish!"
Nick: Ah! (Nick walks away in disgust)
Baravelli(under his breath):Biotsomoscowsindaroomfulafachdisipach!
(There's a knock at the door. Baravelli opens up a security door)
Baravelli: Who are you?
Professor Wagstaff: I’m fine, thanks. Who are you?
Baravelli: I’m fine, too, but you can’t come in unless you give the password!
Wagstaff: Well, what is the password?
Baravelli: Aw no, you gotta tell me! Hey, I tell what I do I give you three guesses. (Baravelli looks around to see if anyone's watching)

Baravelli: It’s the name of a fish.
Wagstaff: Is it Mary?
Baravelli: Ha! That’s a no fish.


Wagstaff: She isn’t? Well, she drinks like one! Let me see. Is it Sturgeon?
Baravelli: Hey, you crazy. A sturgeon, he’s a doctor, cut you open when you sick. Now, I give you more chance.

Wagstaff: I got it! Haddock!
Baravelli: That’s a funny! I got a haddock, too!
Wagstaff: What do you take for a haddock?

Baravelli: Well, sometimes I take a aspirin, and sometimes I take a calomel.
Wagstaff: Say, I’d walk a mile for a calomel.


Baravelli: You mean chocolate calomel, I like that, too, but you no guess it.. (Baravelli shuts the door on Wagstaff. Wagstaff knocks again)
Baravelli: ‘ey, whatsamatter, you don’t unnerstand English? You can’t come in here unless you say "Swordfish." Now I give you one more guess.

Wagstaff: "Swordfish"..."swordfish"...I think I got it…is it "Swordfish?"

Baravelli: Ha! That’s it! You guess it!
(Baravelli opens the door for Wagstaff)
Wagstaff: Pretty good, huh?
Baravelli: Fine..you guess it…
(Wagstaff shakes his hand, runs inside and shuts the door. Baravelli knocks on the door. Wagstaff opens the security door)
Wagstaff: What do you want?
Baravelli: I want to come in.

Wagstaff: What’s the password?
Baravelli: Oh, you no fool me…"Swordfish."

Wagstaff: No, I got tired of that. I changed it. (Wagstaff slams the door. Baravelli knocks again.)

(Wagstaff opens the security door)


Baravelli: What’s the password now?


Wagstaff: Gee I forgot it, I better come outside with you…

(Wagstaff walks outside. The door slams shut. They're locked out. Both begin knocking on the door and kicking it.)

"Horse Feathers"
Words by Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby, S.J. Perelman, Will B. Johnstone, Arthur Sheekman and the Four Marx Brothers

Pictures by Ray June and Norman Z. McLeod

"Horse Feathers" is available on DVD on NBC Universal Home Video.