Booze Movies: The 100 Proof Film Guide

Reviews, news, and features from the world of soused cinema

Welcome Fellow Inebriates

Alcohol--the fabric of film history is soggy with the stuff. Still, film historians have rarely given booze its due. This site is dedicated to setting the record straight.

Monday, January 29, 2007

The Lost Weekend (1945)

USA/B&W/101 m./Dir: Billy Wilder/Wr: Charles Brackett & Billy Wilder/Cast: Ray Milland (Don Birnam), Jane Wyman (Helen St. James), Howard Da Silva (Nat), Phillip Terry (Wick Birnam), Doris Dowling (Gloria)

The Lost Weekend was a gamble. There had never before been a realistic depiction of alcoholism on film. Sure, there had been a few temperance melodramas in the Twenties and Thirties, but none of them had been what anyone would call true-to-life. Otherwise, the movies had relegated booze and boozers to the role of comic relief. The consensus of opinion in Hollywood was that The Lost Weekend was a losing bet. No one thought audiences would want to see a character debase himself due to alcohol addiction, and it was whispered that director Wilder and star Milland were committing career suicide in the attempting such a project. As it turned out, the film garnered four Academy Awards--two for Wilder (Best Director and Screenplay, shared with co-writer Charles Brackett), one for Milland (Best Actor), and one for “Best Picture.”

The film documents a four-day weekend in the life of an alcoholic (Milland), as the initially charming inebriate lies, steals, hallucinates, and eventually considers suicide due to his reliance on the bottle. On the whole, it’s dark stuff, but the typically sharp Brackett/Wilder screenplay keeps the proceedings from getting too maudlin (watch for the physical business they give Milland each time he lights a cigarette). The only misstep is the ending, which seems a bit too hopeful in relation to what has come before.

As for Milland, he gives the best performance of his career. Whether the scene requires him to be charming, manipulative, pathetic, or delirious, he hits just the right notes. His portrayal of a souse on the slide is an object lesson in the pitfalls of too much of a good thing.

Drinks Consumed--Rye, Gin, Vermouth

Intoxicating Effects--Sneaking sips, slurred speech, stumbling, bar tossed, hangover, the shakes, and delirium tremens

Potent Quotables--BIRNAM: You don’t approve of drinking?

NAT: Not the way you drink.

BIRNAM: It shrinks my liver, doesn’t it, Nat? It pickles my kidneys, yes. But what does it do to my mind? It tosses the sandbags overboard so the balloon can soar. Suddenly, I’m above the ordinary. I’m confident, supremely confident. I’m walking a tightrope over Niagra Falls. I’m one of the great ones. I’m Michelangelo molding the beard of Moses. I’m van Gogh painting pure sunlight. I’m Horowitz playing the “Emperor Concerto.” I’m John Barrymore before the movies got him by the throat. I’m Jesse James and his two brothers. All three of them! I’m W. Shakespeare. And out there, it’s not 3^rd Avenue any longer. It’s the Nile, Nat, the Nile, and down it floats the barge of Cleopatra.

Video Availability--DVD

Similarly Sauced Cinema--Ray Milland hit the bottle again in the 1951 melodrama Night Into Morning.

Saturday, January 27, 2007

Bad Santa (2003)

USA/91 m./Dir: Terry Zwigoff/Wr: Glenn Ficarra & John Requa/Cast: Billy Bob Thornton(Willie Soak), Tony Cox (Marcus), Brett Kelly (Thurman Merman), Lauren Graham (Lois), Bernie Mac (Gin), John Ritter (Bob Chipeska)

For those of us of the “bah, humbug” crowd that find sugarcoated holiday fare intolerable, Bad Santa provides the perfect 100 proof antidote. This laugh-out-loud dark comedy is simply the funniest film to be produced so far this decade; and it can proudly stand head-to-head with the best work of W.C. Fields.

Billy Bob Thornton stars as Willie Soak, a small-time safecracker who, with his dwarf partner, Marcus (Tony Cox), takes a job each year as a department store Santa Claus and elf combo, in order to case the business they plan to rob. Although the scheme has resulted in several big scores, Willie has become unreliable over the years due to his drinking. The pair has a hard time staying inconspicuous, because the sham Santa isn’t a good-natured drunk like Dudley Moore’s Arthur. He’s a bad-tempered, foul-mouthed, suicidal, pissing-his-pants drunk. If the heist wasn’t complicated enough, it doesn’t help that Willie can’t shake a weird, fat kid (Brett Kelly) who still believes in Santa Claus.

Thankfully, this is not the type of film where a grumpy adult learns the true meaning of Christmas from a loveable waif. Bad Santa is vile, depraved, gross, and at times near tragic, but the film manages to get away with its dark subject matter, because it is balanced with uproarious dialogue and situations. It’s a shame that this type of film never wins awards, because Thornton, Cox, and John Ritter all deliver Oscar-caliber performances. If you hate Christmas or you just love liquored laughs, Bad Santa will have you in hysterics for days after viewing it.

Drinks Consumed--Bourbon, Beer, and Vodka (straight and screwdrivers)

Intoxicating Effects--Swearing, staggering, stumbling, vomiting, public urination, soused sex, passing out, the shakes, public disturbance, destruction of property, and physical violence

Potent Quotables--WILLIE: You can’t drink worth a shit. You know that?

MARCUS: I weigh 92 pounds, you dick.

Video Availability--Three versions of the film are available on DVD: Bad Santa, Badder Santa, and Bad Santa: Director’s Cut. Badder Santa is the longest of the bunch, adding seven minutes of equally amusing footage to the theatrical cut. The Director’s Cut is actually three minutes shorter than the theatrical version, but it does contain alternative material that was not available in the previous versions. Overall, Badder Santa is the preferred version, but the Director’s Cut is an interesting curiosity for fans of the film.

Similarly Sauced Cinema--Coach Buttermaker (Walter Matthau) of The Bad News Bears (1976) also mixed kids and alcohol with amusing results, so it wasn’t surprising that Billy Bob agreed to put his stamp on the role in the 2005 remake.

Thursday, January 25, 2007

Cat Ballou (1965)

USA/97 m./Dir: Elliot Silverstein/Wr: Walter Newman & Frank R. Pierson/Cast: Jane Fonda (Catherine Ballou), Lee Marvin (Kid Shelleen), Michael Callan (Clay Boone), Dwayne Hickman (Jed), Tom Nardini (Jackson)

From the silent features of William S. Hart to HBO’s small-screen masterpiece, Deadwood, liquor has played an essential role in Western storytelling. Nearly every oater has showcased booze in some capacity, but the Western comedy, Cat Ballou, may take the prize as the most bleary-eyed thanks to Lee Marvin’s Oscar-winning turn as the alky gunslinger, Kid Shelleen.

Town troubadours Nat King Cole and Stubby Kaye relay the story of Catherine Ballou (Jane Fonda), an inexperienced schoolteacher who turns outlaw when corrupt local authorities try to force her father off his land. Needing professional guns, Cat sends for Shelleen, not knowing that the celebrated gunman has become a sloppy drunk. With the aid of the sagebrush souse, Cat soon finds herself in the hands of the law with a noose around her neck.

Cat Ballou features plenty of whiskey-soaked mayhem, from drunken horseback riding, to unfocused gunplay (“He did it! He missed the barn!”), to the memorable image of the hung-over Shelleen slouched in his saddle atop a woozy, cross-legged horse. The ingredients of six-guns, slapstick, and song blend together to form a pleasant cocktail that, while light and unsophisticated, goes down smoothly.

Drinks Consumed--Whiskey

Intoxicating Effects--Slurred speech, bad breath, staggering, passing out, harmonizing, drunk horseback riding, bravado, public disturbance, destruction of property, physical violence, and hangover

Potent Quotables--JACKSON: Look at your eyes.

SHELLEEN: What’s wrong with my eyes?

JACKSON: They’re red… bloodshot.

SHELLEEN: You ought to see ‘em from my side.

Video Availability--DVD

Similarly Sauced Cinema--The genres of Western and comedy were most memorably merged in Blazing Saddles (1974), featuring Gene Wilder as the Waco Kid, the gunfighter with the shakiest gun hand in movie history.

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Booze News: Clive Owen is Philip Marlowe!

“She was a charming middle-aged lady with a face like a bucket of mud. I gave her a drink. She was a gal who'd take a drink, if she had to knock you down to get to the bottle.”

--Dick Powell as Philip Marlowe in Murder, My Sweet (1944)

This item from today’s Variety is the best movie news I’ve heard in some time:

"Owen tracks down noir with Marlowe

Universal, Strike uncover Chandler series

By Michael Fleming

Universal Pictures and Strike Entertainment have found a new vehicle for Clive Owen: Raymond Chandler's hardboiled private eye Philip Marlowe.

Strike has made a deal with Phil Clymer at U.K.-based Chorion to get rights to a Chandler mystery series that includes "The Big Sleep" and "Farewell My Lovely." Strike's Marc Abraham and Eric Newman will produce the film, with Owen exec producing. The project is in a nascent stage -- they are courting writers and filmmakers -- and they haven't decided which title to adapt.

But they sparked to having Owen narrate the dramas in Chandler's testosterone-laced prose, something Owen did well in "Sin City." The plan is to keep the noir spirit of the Chandler books, and keep the mysteries set in the 1940s in Los Angeles, with Marlowe continuing to be the hard-drinking, wisecracking gumshoe."

Marlowe is my favorite of the hardboiled, hard-drinking pulp detectives of the 1940’s. I’ve read all seven of Chandler’s novels, and I hope Owen and company go back to The Big Sleep and keep churning out sequels until they’ve covered the booze-soaked lot of them. Owen will be joining an impressive group of actors that have portrayed the swilling shamus, including Dick Powell, Humphrey Bogart, Robert Montgomery, James Garner, Robert Mitchum, Elliot Gould, Powers Booth, and James Caan. In my opinion, Powell was the best (Sorry, Bogart), and I could see Owen being just as good.

Monday, January 22, 2007

The Bank Dick (1940)

USA/B&W/74 m./Dir: Edward Cline/Wr: Mahatma Kane Jeeves (W.C. Fields)/Cast: W.C. Fields (Egbert Sousé), Grady Sutton (Og Oggilby), Franklin Pangborn (J. Pinkerton Snoopington), Shemp Howard (Joe)

Comedians tend to produce their strongest work in their youth, but at the age of 60, W.C. Fields wrote and starred in The Bank Dick, an acknowledged masterpiece of screen comedy and arguably his finest work. Universal gave Fields full creative control on the picture, and he took full advantage of it, filling the film with jokes on his favorite themes--disapproving family members, malevolent children, pompous authority figures, and most of all, booze.

In this classic, The Great Man portrays Egbert Sousé (accent grave over the “e”), a small town layabout, who spends his happiest hours downing cocktails at the Black Pussy Café. After accidentally disrupting the getaway of a couple of bank robbers, Sousé is rewarded with a job as a security guard and is soon involved in embezzling bank funds. The paper-thin plot serves as a framework on which to hang a number of alcohol-fueled gags, including a memorable sequence in which Fields slips the bank examiner a Mickey with the help of the Black Pussy’s bartender, Joe (Stooge Shemp Howard).

Everything works in The Bank Dick, from the glimpses of Sousé’s horrific home life, to the chummy tête-à-tête with his bartender, to the climatic car chase (which is slapstick at its most surreal). The film is drunkenly incoherent--no plot or real connection between the scenes begins to emerge until halfway through the movie--but the proceedings are so funny, you aren’t likely to notice. Incidentally, Fields was able to get the name, “The Black Pussy,” past censors, because his friend, Leon Errol, owned a Santa Monica bar and grill of the same name.

Drinks Consumed--Straight Rye (referred to as “poultice” and “depth bomb”), rye highballs, and absinthe

Intoxicating Effects--Boasting, swearing (of a sort), sneaking sips, hiccups, slurred speech, staggering, passing out, and Mickey-slipping

Potent Quotables--Sousé (to his bartender): Was I in here last night, and did I spend a twenty dollar bill?

JOE: Yeah.

Sousé: Oh, boy. What a load that is off my mind. I thought I’d lost it.

Video Availability--DVD, as part of the W.C. Fields Comedy Collection

Similarly Sauced Cinema--Fields co-starred with Black Pussy-owner Leon Errol in Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941).