Nothing to add but that it’s a great movie! One of my all-time favorites. I watch it whenever I need reassurance that it’s okay to be different from the masses.
I was a kid when H&M was first released. I was with my family in San Francisco, on vacation, and my folks thought it might be a fun movie to take us kids to (they had only read the capsule summary). As all you fans know, the first scene starts with Harold performing one of his very authentic-looking suicides. My father turned to my mother and said “I thought this was supposed to be a comedy.” I think we all enjoyed it after all (it’s one of my favorite films).
Yeah, he should just consider Harold a jerk and leave it at that.
I only saw the complete film a couple of months ago (saw bits and pieces over the years); I loved it.
When he self-immolated he draped himself in some sort of tent. Apparently he slipped out the back just before he set it ablaze.
The pistol was either blanks (though, as Jon Erik Hexum found out, those can be dangerous) or, whether blanks or live shells, he aimed above morality (and by morality I mean above his head). The hara kiri dagger was a stage prop as Sunshine showed (the blade retracts into the handle and squirts blood) and the hanging was with a prop rope (though at least one actor had his neck broken with one of those a few years ago when the harness slipped). In the novelization (link above) he mentions his underwater breathing equipment that helped him do the dead floating in the pool, and chopping off his hand was of course accomplished with a prosthetic. Being rich and home schooled and demented he knew a lot about special effects/magic, which is why I was surprised he didn’t fall for Sunshine since she was, while not as bright, at least as melodramatic as he was (though there is the “Harold is gay” camp- personally I think he was just a weirdass [and to a degree a poseur- Maude being the real deal with life-risking and suicide et al horrifies him]).
I love Vivian Pickles (Harold’s mother) in everything she was in: Candleshoe, Elizabeth R (as Mary Q of Scots) and various guest appearances- she plays a snooty self-absorbed upper class by-atch better than anybody. I’ve wondered if she’s related to Christine Pickles, the English actress bk4 St. Elsewhere and Monica/Ross’s mother on Friends.
Either way, what this country needs is more Nathan Hales.
Bud Cort still shows up occasionally and is always good; he’s one of those actors of undeniable talent who never really fit into normal Hollywood roles, I guess.
ETA: Ruth Gordon must have had a lot of stories to tell in real life. Always liked her. I wish the movie Maxie were out on DVD.
PS- damn but Bud Cort got over the weirdly cute phase (though admittedly a major car accident didn’t help).
Trivia: Cort was a good friend of Groucho Marx’s- ahem- companion/managerErin Fleming and lived with her and Groucho for a few years in the early 70s. He says Groucho was the closest friend he ever had and a surrogate grandfather, but a bio of Groucho refers to him as an “unwanted houseguest” or something like; no idea which version is correct.
More trivia: Because Ruth Gordon was blazing hot from having won the Oscar as Satanic witch Minnie Kastevet and other 60s/early 70s films, her salary was the biggest expense of the movie. Colin Higgins really wanted Cort but was only able to offer a small salary (around $75,000) and a percent of the profits, but Cort turned down the movie because he felt the salary was too small. (He was fairly hot from MASH, Brewster McCloud, and theatre roles). Higgins somehow got more funding and paid him $125,000 with no back-end.
BIG MISTAKE on Cort’s part. The percentage of the movie (which was not expected to become a cult hit) would have made him millions in theatrical releases and then home video sales. Higgins himself was loaded from his points in the film (and from a good deal he made for Best Little Whorehouse in Texas year’s later before Hollywood Accounting was as notoriously crooked) and his estate still generates a small fortune that goes to his charitable trust.
Love this movie. It showed last year at our local art deco theater where they run a series of old movies on the big screen. Being a college town, the place was packed with kids younger than the movie itself. Being middle-aged, and seeing it sober for the first time, it was almost like seeing it for the first time. All the holocaust references, for example, were new to me. Sadly, all the Vietnam stuff seemed completely contemporary.
Not to thread-shit or anything, but whenever H&M is on TV, I only watch a little bit until I move on.
Unless it’s before the part when he upsets him mother and does that long, slow look into the camera and just barely smiles. That one take is always worth waiting for.
I came in to say how great she was as well. One of my favorite scenes is when she is filling out the computer dating questionaire for Harold. It’s hysterical and horrifying at the same time.