Uncle Scoopy's Fun House

A couple of old British ladies share a young studmuffin painter. The old biddies are aware of each other, and would like to have the young man to themselves, but they are much happier with half a loaf than with none. The painter, for his part, seems to have nothing other than good looks. He exhibits no depth of feeling. He is pleasant to both women, but he doesn't really have any plans to incorporate either of the lonely old coots into his future. The oldsters, therefore, are not only relegated to half a loaf, but face the prospect that soon they will have none.

In the course of the ten days during which the story takes place, we see everyday people doing and talking about everyday things: getting their shots, playing charades, babysitting the neighbors' kids, discussing the weather, getting a haircut. The big excitement for the two lonely old ladies is the sound of the phone - the prospect that the studmuffin may be calling.

Sounds boring, doesn't it? Sounds like a very tedious soap opera. Your basic weepfest with a predictably pseudo-tragic ending.

Without changing the script in any way, let's simply have one of the old ladies be a man. No need to change the script, we'll just call him Daniel instead of Danielle, and hire a famous actor for the part. The studmuffin painter thus becomes a bi-sexual, but we won't really dwell on that or the matter of gender roles in general, and we won't really take any position in favor of or against bisexuality or homosexuality. In fact, we won't even mention the sex roles at all. We'll just film the script exactly the same way we would have done it with two women.

Now we still have the same incredibly boring soap opera, but we have generated a vast amount of instant controversy. When the young painter visits his doctor/lover, we don't see him smooching with an older woman, but with Peter Finch. Everyone around them simply takes all this for granted.

This caused quite a stir in 1971, as you might imagine. The politically correct set felt that the offhanded treatment of the homosexual relationship was sophisticated and compassionate, signifying the beginning of a mature new world and a mature new cinema. The conservatives felt that the film's amoral, non-judgmental approach, as exemplified by its treatment of the two relationships as precisely equivalent, was morally reprehensible. The controversy got people talking about the movie, and about the issues it raised.

Let's give the movie its due. It was groundbreaking. It featured a tolerant attitude during a time when such tolerance toward gay relationships was quite a daring thing to exhibit. It did that in a quiet and subtle way, without any preaching. It showed men kissing each other tenderly. Let us raise a glass to director John Schlesinger for using his considerable fame and influence to attract some fairly big movie stars to his project, and to bring this quiet little film to the public's attention.

Having thus praised Caesar, let us then bury him. Let's be honest. The film was was otherwise unmemorable, and would have died a quiet death if every shot had been exactly the same, and every word of dialogue had been exactly the same, but the two old ladies had both been ladies. It's one of those movies which defines maturity by the lack of a sense of humor, the absence of dreams, and the constant habit of staring out of the window meaningfully.

Critics either praised the film for its artistic merit and groundbreaking attitudes, or lambasted it for its digressions, and its complete lack of energy and entertainment value. I felt that Mark Adnum of Outrate.net was the one critic who kept the film in perfect perspective:

Sidebar: this is the one and only theatrical film which was written by the film critic Penelope Gilliatt, who wrote for The New Yorker and the Observer (UK).

She may not have had much of a career as a screenwriter, but she got an Oscar nomination in her one try, which puts her one up on fellow critic Roger Ebert, whose screenwriting contribution consisted of co-writing three Russ Meyer films.

Although I recommend avoiding it, based on our system, this is a C. Of course, it is not my kind of movie, but I really had to struggle through this respected film. I started watching it three times before I could make it through. I couldn't find a single thing to enjoy about it, although there are things to admire.

Other crap archives. May also include newer material than the ones above, since it's sorta in real time.

Dear Uncle:

Great site. I start my day there every day.

Ben Stein may be Deep Throat. As you point out, he worked in Nixon's White House, and it was at the right time. He was present at the resignation good-bye speech Nixon gave to the staff (sporting a near-afro.). The anomaly of Deep Throat has always been, how could someone be both close enough AND disloyal enough, or "how does a liberal get into Nixon's white house?" Maybe he gets there because his Father works in the innermost circle. Anyway, I have no personal knowledge of any of this, but I heard somewhere, maybe on Ben Stein's Biography, that he was a childhood friend of Carl Bernstein. That's a whole lot of coincidence.

J.M., conspiracy theorist

There is a logical connection, and Time Magazine said as long ago as 1974 or 1975 that Stein was one of five possibilities. Stein did go to high school with Carl Bernstein, and he did also write speeches for Richard Nixon, but the timing is wrong. Stein moved to Washington in April of 1973, long after the break-in.

David: We talked about this earlier, that you served in the Nixon White House. Buy, sell, or hold the likelihood that Ben Stein is Deep Throat?

Stein: There was no Deep Throat, I'm sure of it. I certainly wasn't. At the time Deep Throat was operating, I was a hippie in the woods of Santa Cruz, Calif. -- so it wasn't me. And I don't think there was any Deep Throat. I think it was somebody Bob Woodward made up in one of his more imaginative moments, but that's just an opinion.

Hey Scoop, while researching Esperanto I found this interesting trivia about FunHouse favorite Captain Kirk. Man does he have a lot on the IMDB - writer, director, many many TV show appearances, records, even CEO of his own special effects company. Did you know that one of Shatner's wives drowned at his home?

This movie, Incubus, was written and performed entirely in Esperanto, a made up language like Pig Latin. They won't even let it be translated in other languages. It seems like it has a Poltergeist-type curse attached to it also.

I found this to be even funnier than making a movie in Esperanto. It is from the Wikipedia online encyclopedia, about "constructed languages":

The movie even has some nudity (we reviewed the film in March, 2002). Ann Atmar.