ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour (470)

Thank you for joining us today

Before our feature presentation, ACME would like to start the evening with another Porky Pig Looney Tunes cartoon, the 1938 Wholly Smoke, directed by Frank Tashlin



This is the final Looney Tunes cartoon that Frank Tashlin directed during his first stint at the studio (and thus his old unit that would later be given to Chuck Jones), as he would shortly depart later in 1938 for Disney and later Screen Gems for five years.


We were trying to figure out what to watch on the season premiere episode of The ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour, It was solved immediately when we saw this Tiny Desk Concert from NPR:



Robert Plant, as always, sounded in great voice.


We’ve selected another entry from the excellent reference book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, edited by Steven Jay Schneider. Today’s film is the 1985 drama Kiss of the Spider Woman, directed by Héctor Babenco, based on the novel by Manuel Puig and starring William Hurt, Raul Julia, and Sônia Braga. The film was a critical success, winning several awards including a Best Actor Oscar for Hurt.

During rehearsals, the two actors had trouble finding the chemistry they needed for their scenes together. To better understand what each needed from the other's role, William Hurt suggested they try an experiment where they would switch roles, with Hurt as Valentin and Raul Julia as Molina. The role-switching rehearsal went so well that Hurt initially suggested to director Hector Babenco that they should switch parts for the film as well. Obviously, the switch did not occur, but Hurt states that it was a very useful experiment in helping them more fully understand their own characters.

Although the two lead actors worked out any difficulties they may have had with each other, tensions started early on in the process between William Hurt and Hector Babenco. Producer David Weisman later remarked that Hurt had a wonderful mastery of language and spoke in "great metaphorical ellipses that are hard to follow even if English is your native language." For Babenco it was impossible. He became frustrated by Hurt talking "for hours" and learned to just nod and pretend to agree in order to keep the conversations relatively short.

Please find a comfy chair and join us here at The ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour as we watch this powerfully beautiful film: Kiss of the Spider Woman.



Initial screenings did not go well. Raul Julia was furious after watching the first cut: "What happened to the movie? What happened to all our great work?!" After seven months of post-production, the film was sent to the New York Film Festival. The selection committee rejected it without even watching the whole movie. William Hurt wasn't too concerned about this until he saw the first cut himself and realized why they dismissed it so abruptly. The fantasy film sequences were too long and overwhelmed the story of the relationship between the two men. He wanted to buy the print and burn it so it would never be released.



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