Before our feature presentation, ACME would like to start the evening with another Daffy Duck Looney Tunes cartoon, the 1943 Yankee Doodle Daffy , (co-starring Porky Pig,) directed by Friz Freleng.
The Warner cartoonists occasionally played jokes on themselves and their audience, sometimes "testing the waters" to see what they could get away with. In this case, during Daffy's Carmen Miranda impersonation, and out of character with the rest of the set-piece, a single frame appears to show Daffy subtly giving "the bird" to the viewer while grinning devilishly. This would have been invisible to the theater audience, but can easily be found with now-routinely available equipment that allows frame-by-frame study of films. Viewing a cartoon that way can reveal the amazing artistry of the Warner Studios.
Before the start of our feature presentation, ACME would like to share with the youth of America Steely Dan sing Heavy Metal:
I haven't played one of Bill McClintock great mashups in a while. I'm glad I found this one
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 epic 1960 Spartacus directed by Stanley Kubrick (brought on after Anthony Mann was fired,) and writing by Dalton Trumbo, and starring Kirk Douglas, Laurence Olivier, Jean Simmons, Charles Laughton, Peter Ustinov, John Gavin, and Tony Curtis. At the time of its first release in 1960, Spartacus was hailed as the first intellectual epic since the silent days - the first Roman or Biblical saga to deal with ideas as well as spectacle. The film has a very complicated back story: David Lean was considered to direct Spartacus, but declined. Laurence Olivier was then asked to direct, but he felt the dual role of actor-director would prove too demanding. Anthony Mann took over as director, but was fired by Kirk Douglas after two weeks of shooting. The movie was inspired by a best seller by Howard Fast, and adapted to the screen by the blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo. Kirk Douglas, who produced the film, effectively broke the blacklist by giving Trumbo screen credit instead of making him hide behind a pseudonym. The ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour would like you to join us in watching the epic, Spartacus. So push away from the table, get comfortable (this film clocks in at just over three hours,) and enjoy the film.
Of the 167 days it took Kubrick to shoot Spartacus, six weeks were spent directing an elaborate battle sequence in which 8,500 extras dramatized the clash between the Roman troops and Spartacus' slave army. Several scenes in the battle drew the ire of the Legion of Decency and were therefore cut. These include shots of men being dismembered (dwarfs with false torsos and an armless man with a phony "break-away" limb were used to give authenticity).
Demand Euphoria!
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