Before our feature presentation, ACME would like to start the evening with another Daffy Duck Looney Tunes cartoon, the 1943 The Wise Quacking Duck , directed by Bob Clampett.
When dressed as a fortune teller, Daffy is imitating comedian Jerry Colonna. He even begins with one of Colonna's signature lines: "Greetings, Gate. Let's osculate."
Before the start of our feature presentation, ACME would like you to know that we are in no way endorsing this beverage. We just couldn't believe someone made a scotch flavored with beaver's butt!?!
Castoreum is a yellowish, strong-smelling secretion that comes from the castor sacs found near the base of a beaver’s tail. It’s an FDA-approved food additive, and hey, you can now get whiskey that’s flavored with the stuff. According to the website Snopes: “Getting a beaver to produce castoreum for purposes of food processing is tough. Foodies bent on acquiring some of the sticky stuff have to anesthetize the animal and then ‘milk’ its nether regions.”
A big no thank you.
We've picked another entry from the excellent reference book, 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die by Steven Jay Schneider. Today's film is the 1960 influence nouvelle vague À bout de souffle (Breathless) directed by Jean-Luc Godard, writing by François Truffaut and Claude Chabrol, and starring Jean-Paul Belmondo, and Jean Seberg. Unlike many of the films on this list, Breathless was immediate recognized as an amazing debut film. The film was released around the same time as François Truffaut's The 400 Blows and Alain Resnais' Hiroshima Mon Amour, thus establishing what came to be known as the French Nouvelle Vague (New Wave). According to director Jean-Pierre Melville, Godard asked him for consultation during the post-production stage, because the first edit was too long for distribution. Melville suggested Godard remove all scenes that slowed down the action (his own role as novelist Parvulesco included). Instead of excluding entire scenes, though, Godard cut little bits from here and there. This led to the "jump cut" technique this movie introduced. Melville declared the result to be excellent. The ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour would like you to join us in watching this seminal work, À bout de souffle. So push away from the table, get comfortable and enjoy the film. (Remember to turn the closed captioning on for English subtitles.)
Jean-Paul Belmondo was very surprised by the warm reception the film received. Immediately after production, he was convinced it was so bad that he thought the film would never be released. Jean Seberg largely felt the same way as Jean-Paul Belmondo that the film was incredibly disorganized and was highly doubtful about the film's commercial viability.
Demand Euphoria!
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