Nobody's Perfect

Expository Writing

Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot

We watched Some Like It Hot this week. It takes a while getting started, but as soon as the guys appear in their female disguises, it takes off and never stops. When Tony Curtis adopts his second disguise, as an oil tycoon, he does an impression of Cary Grant. It'll be interesting to see if anyone in the class picked up on that. I'll bet at least a couple of students did. I'll also be interested to hear what they made of the movie's famous final line. ("Nobody's perfect.") And then, of course, there's Marilyn Monroe. Will they see what made her an icon?

Sweet Smell Reaction

I was fascinated by the reaction of my Writing About the Movies class to Sweet Smell of Success, which we saw this week. There's this scene where Tony Curtis' character, Sidney Falco, tries to pressure a cigarette girl, who's in a jam, to sleep with a sleazy newspaper columnist as a way of getting out of that jam. The students were  audibly offended, or even revolted, by Sidney's tactics. The reaction had an astonishing, real-world vibe to it, as if some of the students were aware of similar situations. In any case, that sequence really struck a nerve. I'll never see the film in quite the same way again.