So for many years (I’ve lost track of when I started) I’ve been working my way through AFI’s Top 100 Greatest American Movies of All Time. My checklist has been pinned to several different refrigerators in at least two states, and by now I’ve ticked off about 80 of the 100. I’ll earnestly watch a trio of westerns or Hitchcock flicks, then lose interest in mainstream Hollywood and wander off into a Bollywood marathon or a documentary spree (or maybe even see a slew of new movies), only to return to the project months later for another round. By no means do I dig all of these movies, but I sure love checklists!
Let’s see. It happened one night recently that I finally got around to watching It Happened One Night. Solid Frank Capra entry. Good show! Check!
Bringing Up Baby, on the other hand, didn’t happen one night. No, it took me the past three evenings to get through this assault of a screwball comedy. The sensation of watching it was vaguely reminiscent of trying to chase away (catch?) little Jeremy Martin, the fastest runner in my fourth-grade class, as he took schoolyard name-calling to an interesting new level by mercilessly taunting me: “Katherine Hepburn! Katherine Hepburn! Katherine Hepburn!”
The best thing about the Bringing Up Baby DVD (another generous loan from The Best Library) was the gallery of trailers for other Howard Hawks films. This trailer for Rio Bravo is kind of a giddy thrill, especially when the rockin’ baby-faced Ricky Nelson breaks into song and then breaks character to address the movie-going masses. (”There’ll never be another like the ragged woman-wrecked castoff called Dude.” Those folks obviously never predicted the coming of The Big Lebowski.)
Even more enduring a thrill is the reference interview fantasy that introduces The Big Sleep. Check it out!