The Hudsucker Proxy

I felt very tired and stayed at home instead of going out on $5 movie night, and I sat in front of the television set to watch “The Hudsucker Proxy.”  It felt like a melding of Frank Capra movies like “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” “Meet John Doe,” and “It’s a Wonderful Life” with the scheming of “The Producers.”  Tim Robbins was the naïve James Stewart or Gary Cooper coming into town from Muncie, Indiana.  Jennifer Jason Leigh was the reporter in the vein of Rosalind Russell, Jean Arthur, Katharine Hepburn, or Barbara Stanwyck.  Paul Newman played a key role, Sidney J. Mussbruger, one of the board of directors.  This was the same year that he appeared in “Nobody’s Fool.”  Robbins is Norville Barnes, promoted straight from the mailroom to president of Hudsucker Industries as a scheme to depress stock prices and gain a controlling interest.  This movie is about other movies more than it’s about any particular place or time in history, and that is why critics like Roger Ebert gave it a lukewarm review.  The movie looks good with its distinctive sets and shots, but it doesn’t have a such a good reason to exist.  On the one hand, capitalism is a rigged game which people like Mussburger control.  On the other, bumblers like Norville can get lucky, almost like a corporate Peter Sellers.  The story fictionalizes the invention of the Hula Hoop, although I don’t see why.  The hero of the story contemplates suicide, like in a Frank Capra film, but the scene takes a wild Coen brothers turn which is not too satisfying.  An article in The Atlantic mentioned references in this movie to “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town,” “The Lady Eve,” “Sullivan’s Travels,” “Metropolis,” “Meet John Doe,” “Christmas in July,” and “The Third Man,” among others.  I know that I couldn’t keep track.  Charles Durning, Peter Gallagher, and Steve Buscemi were in the film.  Anna Nicole Smith shows up as a sort of Jayne Mansfield type of woman, which I thought was an amusing bit of casting.  It was a little bit of a shock seeing her here, her first movie role.  She would live for not quite 13 more years, dying in 2007 at age 39.  “The Hudsucker Proxy” was supposed to be a commercial film, so naturally it died at the box office.  A movie with a title like “The Hudsucker Proxy” is not going to make much money.  The movie had some similarities to “Hail, Caesar!”  They both have stories that seem to be transplanted into the 1950s.  I would say that “The Hudsucker Proxy” ranks low on the list of Coen brothers films.  I couldn’t see why the librarian I knew recommended it to everyone.  The Coens knew how to make films, but I don’t know how they go about choosing the subject matter.  “The Hudsucker Proxy” was not a movie that stayed in my mind very long.  I didn’t really care about Norville’s fate.  I didn’t care about the relationship between Norville and Amy.  You have to start a movie with the right script.  Not even the greatest technique can rescue a script that doesn’t work.  You can’t come up with a winner every time, no matter who much talent you have.  I could see the movie working a little better with Clint Eastwood in the Paul Newman role.  In the morning I heard about the death of Jo Jo White, the basketball player for the Boston Celtics who played a great series against the Phoenix Suns in 1976, including one of the greatest games in history in Game 5.  He was traded to the Golden State Warriors on January 30, 1979, which would be a terrible trade for the Warriors.  He was there only until the end of the following season, and he would go on for one final season with the Kansas City Kings.  I heard his name so much in my youth, and so I had to feel a bit of sadness at this news.  Some of the people who died on January 18 include John Tyler (1862), Rudyard Kipling (1936), Curly Howard (1952), Carl Betz (1978), Kate McGarrigle (2010), and Glenn Frey (2016).  Today is a birthday for Jason Segel (38) and Kevin Costner (63).  According to the Brandon Brooks Rewind radio segment for January 18, The Beatles settled a defamation suit that Pete Best filed against them in 1969.  In 1975, “The Jeffersons” debuted on CBS.  Also in 1975, Barry Manilow had his first Number One hit, “Mandy.”  In 1978, the Warren Zevon album “Excitable Boy” was released.  In 1986, Dionne and Friends, consisting of Dionne Warwick, Gladys Knight, Stevie Wonder, and Elton John, reached Number One on the singles chart with “That’s What Friends Are For.”