I remember watching Oprah, when I was a kid, and Nora Ephron was on talking about ageing. She was so funny and shockingly explicit about her experience. And I remember the first time I saw When Harry Met Sally, when I was ten. I thought I’d hate it, I’m not a rom-com fan, and as a kid I was narrow minded about movies, but I loved it, and it remains one of my favorite movies ever, a kind of guilty pleasure. After watching Everything Is Copy, a great Nora Ephron documentary, I decided to watch all of her movies. Her work is all around us, in essays, and books and films, I wanted to dig in. I had already seen When Harry met Sally (one of my faves, as I said), Heartburn (which I watched for the first time a few years back when I did my Meryl Streep deep dive, and I liked it, Meryl and Jack Nicholson doing the work, acting like crazy), Sleepless in Seattle (which I don’t like much), You’ve Got Mail (hated it), and Julie & Julia (which I loved, even the Amy Adams part). And I’ve also read I feel Bad About my Neck, and I Remember Nothing, two wonderful, laugh out loud funny, essay collections by Ephron. So a good foundation was already laid, but I wanted to explore more.

I had imagined when setting out on this journey that I’d end up writing a classic deep dive blog where I talk about the movies I watched individually, and Nora Ephron in a larger sense. But that’s not what’s going to happen here. I don’t have anything new or interesting to say about each movie individually. The truth is that I didn’t like the bulk of the movies. But this isn’t a take down. The screenplay is one part of a much larger ecosystem when it comes to making movies, and I don’t have anything negative to say about Ephron. I like her, and admire her work, and career, and intelligence. I think the doc about her is great and would highly recommend it. What I’m really here to talk about is the best made for TV movie from the 70s ever made. But first lets run through the other stuff.

Here’s how it shakes out. I thought Mixed Nuts (1994), Lucky Numbers (2000), and Bewitched (2005) were terrible movies. Mixed Nuts is almost a so-bad-it’s-good situation, but not quite.

Cookie (1989), and Michael (1996). and Hanging Up (2000) are weird and not great. When I sat down to watch Michael I realized I had seen it, or part of it, once, when I was about 15. I had a huge Grease era John Travolta crush, and I believe this movie put out that flame forever. Travolta is a mess in this, even beyond the messiness of the character he plays. The movie is a bit of mess. It’s not funny, it’s maudlin if anything, and the romance they try to stir up is bad. Just bad. Cookie is also a pretty bad movie, but it’s lighter, and funnier than Michael, and I liked it a bit better, although I’d say it’s pretty unfocused. Hanging Up has Diane Keaton, Meg Ryan, and Lisa Kudrow (a delight) playing sisters drawn together in family drama. I feel like it should work, but it doesn’t work. The individual performances are good, but the structure is odd, and the movie changes tone right in the final stretch in a jarring way.

My Blue Heaven (1990) and This is my Life (1992) are pretty good movies. In My Blue Heaven, Steve Martin plays a small fry mob guy who is in the witness protection program. Rick Moranis plays the agent that is in charge of keeping him safe and out of trouble until he can testify in court, and he pretty much makes this thing great. You’ve got Joan Cusack (who I love), Carol Kane (love), William Hickey (love, and especially love in this, his character is a hoot), and Deborah Rush. The performances are good. Steve Martin is a bit of a disappointment (but here’s some controversial content: I’m not a big Steve Martin fan, not his acting anyway.) His New York gangster accent is terrible, his wig is terrible, and they let him run his stupid comedy bits too long for my taste. They indulged him, and he was the weakest part of the film. But everything else works, there’s a lot of humor in it, and it holds together as movie pretty well. This is my Life is charming, with great performances and a very young Gabby Hoffman who I always enjoy. Julie Kavner plays a single mom who dreams of being a stand up comedian, and moves her young daughters to New York where she find some success, but at what cost? It’s a good watch. It’s fine.

I had to really work to find a way to watch Silkwood (1983). It’s not available to stream, or purchase, and I even called a few people I know with big DVD collections and came up empty handed. But then a friend of a friend hooked me up (thank you, sir!). I had looked for this movie four or five years ago when I was doing my Meryl Streep completest project (without success), so it felt really nice to finally get my hands on it. You’ve got Meryl Streep, playing Karen Silkwood, Cher, playing Dolly Pelliker, and Kurt Russell, playing Drew Stephens; they share a ramshackle house and work in a plutonium plant. It’s marvelously low income 70s, with everyone young and lean and wearing jeans and tshirts (no bras, and for Kurt, rarely a shirt, which works.) and smoking ciggies and drinking cans of Coors. Really good stuff, it hits as very authentic. Karen and Drew are a couple and Dolly is their lesbian housemate. It’s excellent. Loved all of that. The scenes in the factory are great, everyone suited up and manipulating rods or whatnot, but also just messing around the way you do at a boring job. But trouble is brewing. There are constant concerns about CONTAMINATION, and before exiting workers have to sort of scan themselves to test for any radiation, and if they set off the alarm they are hustled into a rather severe and unpleasant shower situation (silkwood shower, origins). Karen doesn’t trust her employers and feels they are cutting corners and putting employees at risk. She joins forces with the union and eventually starts gathering evidence for a New York Times reporter. This is where the movie looses focus for me a bit. Also it’s over 2 hours long, and you know how I feel about that (generally not good). There’s a funny part where Dolly is hooking up with a married funeral parlor make-up artist. And some intense drama as Karen is accused of purposefully contaminating herself and or her home, with plutonium, which is nuts. Drew leaves and comes back and is mostly unsupportive and mad Karen is on the phone all the time (trying to take down a corrupt system harming the little guys, but whatever Drew, clearly you’re not getting enough attention.) Many of you likely know the outcome here, as this movie is based on the true story of Karen Silkwood, but I’ll leave it in case one of ya’ll want to try and dig this thing up. It’s a very moving film. I liked it a lot.

The entire reason I wanted to write this blog was to talk about the movie Perfect Gentlemen (1978), directed by Jackie Cooper, screenplay by Nora Ephron and starring LAUREN BACALL, Ruth Gordon, Sandy Dennis and Lisa Pelikan. I absolutely loved this movie. And maybe I should have just talked about it as a stand alone, but I think the series of films I watched leading up to it (including Everything Is Copy the Ephron doc) make it a fuller story. This is a made for TV comedy crime film. Yes, you heard me. And, for the love of God, it has Lauren Bacall in it. For those paying attention you’ll know I just watched a dozen Humphrey Bogart films and four of them had the young and sultry Bacall. I then went out and read her autobiography, By Myself and then Some, which was a fun ride. So stumbling onto a later in her career Bacall, in a made for TV comedy crime film, was pretty special, and unexpected. Also Ruth Gordon! Any Harold and Maude or Rosemary’s Baby fans out there (I know there are, cause my reader’s have great taste). So this thing is just amazing. I had to watch it on Youtube, and the quality was terrible, but it honestly made for a richer and more authentic watching experience. The movie opens with the most 70s made for tv movie music you’ve ever heard, and shows three women, traveling separately, to a prison. They are each visiting their husbands. Lauren Bacall plays Lizzie Martin, a wealthy wife to a Union Boss. Sandy Dennis plays Sophie Rosenman, a Jewish woman who runs a delicatessen (she travels in a Rosenman Delicatessen van and brings bags of deli food into the prison, seriously) and her husband is in for tax fraud pertaining to the deli, or something. Lisa Pelikan plays Annie Cavagnaro, who is newly married to Vinnie Cavagnaro, an Italian kid who got framed. Lisa looks about 14 in this movie and weighs about 90lbs. Also their last name sounds a lot like Carbonara, the Italian pasta dish, and it makes me laugh, a lot. And Ruth Gordon plays Mrs. Cavagnaro, Vinnie’s mom. We meet her later.

So the three women end up getting a drink after their visit. They become friends. Que a montage of them traveling to and from the prison together in Lizzie Martin’s Lincoln Continental Stretch Limousine, sipping drinks in the back, and staying at the hotel together. They’re bonding. They all hangout in the prison together with their spouses. The prison visiting area is pretty lit. They have an outdoor area with picnic tables, colorful umbrellas, and lots of food, it’s a cheerful scene. We learn that the Rosenman Deli is struggling. We learn that Annie is pregnant, and has to seek work to get by. And then we learn that Lizzie’s union boss husband has been having an affair, for years, with his secretary. This is a great scene. Annie and Sophie are in the limo and realize they’re not picking up Lizzie, the driver says she isn’t coming (which is weird cause it’s her car). But Sophie Rosenman is like, oh, but swing by her house. Her house is a mansion. Lizzie is drinking highballs, smoking a cigarette and playing solitaire in a stunning outfit. Like ya do. She tells them about the affair, AND she tells them her husband is soon to be getting out of jail, as he is bribing somebody, and she is supposed to help deliver the money, one million dollars. But she isn’t going to do any of that, or visit him, cause she found out about this affair. Somehow the women end up in Lizzie’s sauna. Which is another weird coincidence because saunas have played a large part in my life lately (but that’s a story for another time.) The women begin to lightly float the idea of stealing that money. But Lizzie is like, nah, he’d kill me. He would hunt me down and kill me, no matter what. Period. But Sophie is like, you know what, let’s go to the prison, and just think on this thing. Visit him, and act like everything is normal, and we’ll see if we can figure it out, but don’t tip your hand about this affair. And so they do. And they do make a plan to steal the money, before it’s handed off to Lizzie, so she’ll be in the clear. And they rope a very wily old Mrs. Cavagnaro (Ruth Gordon) into it, cause she knows how to crack a safe.

The plan for the robbery is a wild one. It involves manipulating voices on a cheap cassette recorder (on second thought it may have been top of the line equipment for the times), dressing up as men, getting Annie to work as a chambermaid in a Hotel, and eating pasta with ‘ol Mrs Carbonara (who announces she doesn’t want her share of the money, she just wants to go to Italy with her lover). Many scenes involve Lizzie asking everyone if they’re sure they want to do this, and everyone does, cause, you know, money. Do they get away with it? Well you’ll have to fire up YouTube to find out. This is a can’t miss movie. It’s the most 70s thing you’ll ever see, it’s funny, it holds up, the acting is great, and it’s a wild ride. Five out five, highly recommend.