I don’t want to beat a dead horse or sidetrack the thread any further…but…
Hommage and homage are two different words, with different pronunciations. (Hommage is a particular kind of artistic homage.) The punchline only makes sense if Beatty said “hommage” and Warner didn’t know what he was talking about.
Oh! Good one! I love that movie. The book is very enjoyable too.
I think we tried watching it a long time ago but he has probably forgotten it. It’s on the list!
I use older movies as a history lesson for my kids. Take Easy Rider as a perfect example. Although not a documentary, it does capture perfectly the era in which it was filmed. So I tell my kids that if they were ever interested in that period, then they should watch that film.
And by extension, watch other films of other periods (but we’re talking about B&C here). Don’t hit kids with a hammer, but use the film as a lesson of how things were back then (when the movie was made). As has been noted, how shocking B&C was when released, and compare it to now (Human Centipede came to mind).
Of course, it’s possible to appreciate older movies for their own merits, but a lot of times, I’ll watch an older movie or show, and wonder why I liked it. For example, I saw part of an episode of The Bill Cosby Show this weekend (the one where he was a gym teacher…it came out right after I Spy…not to be confused with the Huxtable version). I hadn’t seen that show in 40 years+/-, and I remember loving it. And you know what? It was horrible! The acting was wooden, the lighting was harsh, the dialogue fake, only Cosby was good. Everything else stunk. But it can be a good history lesson in the ways of TV in the late 60s.
Plus he’ll know Michael Caine from the Batman movies
I liked Bonnie and Clyde, and still do. I don’t see the acting as cartoonish. In fact, the whole “realistic acting” craze has made a number of today’s movies real yawners for me. Consider Adrien Brody in The Pianist. He goes through the entire Holocaust looking slightly put out about things. Talk about dull.
There are any number of classic scenes in Bonnie and Clyde: Clyde yelling at C.W. for screwing up a getaway in the theater, Blanche and the spatula, the Texas Ranger photo scene, (who cares if it didn’t happen like that? Who cares if it didn’t happen at all?) C.W. getting yelled at by his father. ALL of Gene Hackman’s scenes. The chases and Foggy Mountain Breakdown. Do I remember half as much from today’s movies? Hell, no!
About the only thing I would edit out of Bonnie and Clyde would be the kidnap of Gene Wilder and his girlfriend. That was just pointless. So I get refreshments during that.
he probably doesn’t remember it like that.
As far as I can tell, homage and hommage are the same word in two different languages. The French word hommage may be used sometimes in talking about movies but only in the same sense that noir or mise-en-scene or verite are.
Obviously if somebody uses hommage instead of homage in conversation, they are trying to make a different impression. But it’s really no different than somebody saying “I’ll have the soup du jour” rather than saying “I’ll have the soup of the day.” The point they’re making is that they’re speaking in French not that they’re saying anything that couldn’t be said in English.
It’s not like avant-garde or deja vu where the French words have a different meaning than the English words they literally translate to.
The word, in my experience is used mainly in two different constructs:
"‘Bonnie and Clyde’ paid homage to the gangster movies.
In this one, I’d expect it to be pronounced “AH-midge,” or thereabouts (don’t have my IPA handy).
“‘Bonnie and Clyde’ was an homage to the gangster movies.”
In this example, you might hear it pronounced either as the previous or as “oh-MAHZH.” In the example I cited, that was how Beatty pronounced it, and Warner repeated it.
Beatty recounted the story in this doc, which airs occasionally on TCM.
high five
Second suggestion is 12 Angry Men.
Part of the problem with old movies is that they are slow to develop and feature stilted, unimaginative, and useless dialog. If you get rid of extraneous dialog and scenes, these movies would be half as long and twice as exciting. So even though a movie like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s nest is mostly talking, it’s talking that is engaging and to the point. 12 Angry Men is another one like that, even though it is all talking.
We could continue this fascinating philological discussion, or one of us could actually open the dictionary. Wait – too late! 
How about dictionary.com:
This is a tough sell. He will think our TV is broken when there is no colour.
On the other hand, he is currently addicted to a DS game where he role plays a defense attorney and gets a real kick out of the courtroom scenes.
I will try it but I’m not very confident.
I’m kind of doing the same thing with my dad, but in reverse. He’s seventy-five, and can’t get out of the house too much anymore, so for the last few years, I’ve been going over to my parents place for dinner and a movie. My dad provides the dinner, I bring the movie. Turns out, my dad has some pretty hip tastes in films. So far, he’s liked:
Fight Club
Casion Royale (the new one)*
Tropic Thunder
The Big Lebowski (I think he’s enjoyed this one more than any other film I’ve brought over in the last four years we’ve been doing this)
Cowboy Bebop
Futurama
Dr. Who (also the new one)
Kung Fu Hustle
Firefly
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Big Trouble in Little China*
There’s a ton more, of course - like I said, we’ve been doing this for four years now, and haven’t repeated a movie or TV show yet.
I mentioned The Americanization of Emily already. Here’s another excellent James Garner WWII movie: 36 Hours. Garner is one of the officers planning the D-Day invasion. The Germans capture him and want to get him to give up the plans for the invasion. But they know it’ll take too long to torture it out of him. So they set up a fake American hospital to convince Garner he’s been in a coma for five years, the Americans won the war, and he can talk about what he did in the war because it’s no longer secret.
Odd; did you try the link in post #60?
Sure I did. Thanks to your link, it was the first one I went to. But that doesn’t make it the final word on the subject, does it?
I understand the point you’re making - I just don’t agree with it. You’re saying that homage and hommage are two seperate words in the English language which have distinct meanings. I’m saying that homage is an English word and hommage is a French word and they have essentially the same meaning.
So we appear to disagree on this issue. Is there any reason to keep posting about it?
According to Blanche Barrow, as I said before the Texas Ranger scene never happened, but, OTOH, they really DID! kidnap the undertaker/Gene Wilder and his girlfriend and that scene was not far from the truth…and there WAS a point to that scene while you were out getting popcorn: it was another example/glimpse of Bonnie’s dislike of the upcoming inevitable deaths of Bonnie and Clyde.
If he likes heist movies, how about “How to Steal a Million?” Which isn’t a bad introduction to the screwball comedy.
Strange, then why would she write a poem celebrating their impending deaths?
I was thinking of recommending that. The actual heist was really a minor point in the movie. But it worked as a good romantic comedy - Hepburn and O’Toole were great together.