I see your Kim Richards and I raise you a Bud Cort

So Warren's sister is travelling around the country and she stopped off in San Francisco to visit friends. Warren had given her my phone number and she called me and invited me out to see a movie with her and her friend, Jesus. Figuring that everyone needs a little Jesus in their life, I agreed to meet up with them. We went to see an old movie "Harold and Maude." Ashley, that is Warren's sister's name, told me that she enjoyed reading Warren and my post but she wanted us to review older movies. She figured that by enticing me out to see a movie, it would provide fodder for the blog. And it has obviously, because I am writing about the movie in the blog. So maybe Warren and I will begin reviewing older movies. Now "Harold and Maude" isn't really that old a movie. It was made in 1971. Not exactly the days just after "talkies" were beginning to be shown. But I see her point.

She has a blog also and has already written her entry about that night. You can read it at: http://ashontheroad.blogspot.com/. Ashley has already taken the best line from the movie and used it in her blog, so I won't reprint it here.

As she indicates in her blog she and her friend were walking down the street and noticed that "Harold and Maude" would be playing at the Castro Theater as part of the SF Sketchfest. And Bud Cort, one of the two stars of the movie, would be talking afterwards. In all my years of coming to SF to visit friends or family or just in the last year while living here, I have never been to the infamous Castro Theater. There is a reason. The Castro is in the Castro district of San Francisco. The gay district. Now there are gay people all over San Francisco, we don't herd them into one area and cordon it off. But the Castro is where gays know that they can be their most flamboyant. Think of all the gay stereotypical behavior and it is in the Castro; shops selling ass-less chaps, public displays of affection, etc. And it is home to a great old theater. I am sorry that I never saw a show there before this past Thursday.

"Harold and Maude" is about death. Not the old tired cliches about death, but seeing it as the integral part of life. The necessary and inevitable end. Harold, played by Bud Cort, is obsessed with death. He is a rich, privileged late-teen/early twenties kid who keeps faking his own suicide to shock his mother, Vivian Pickles (who gives a tremendous performance, only to be outdone [but just barely] by Ruth Gordon). His mother, having seen his fake attempts so many times, merely ignores his theatrics with a disgusted toss of her well coiffed head or shrilly castigates Harold for ruining a perfectly good evening. Hilarious stuff. Oh yeah, this is a comedy.

Anyway, Harold is so obsessed with death that he attends funerals. It is at a funeral where Harold meets Maude. She is an old lady just weeks away from her eightieth birthday. In contrast to Harold, Maude loves life. She is goofy and irreverent. She steals cars, saves trees, cackles as she tweaks the sensibilities of the established order, and just in general lives as her own person. The effect on Harold is intoxicating and he slowly begins to appreciate his own life as he engages in adventures with her.

The movie is life affirming. Essentially the message is don't obsess over the bad things in life, but embrace each day as if it were your last. That is a worthwhile message. But it is not as revelatory as the critics make it out to be and this movie is not, as some have stated, "The Best of All Time." It was a nice movie with incredible performances by Cort, Gordon, and Pickles. I laughed. I cried. I left the movie theater.

Bud Cort today looks just like he did in the movie. Not! He is forty years older. In the Q & A his fans asked many questions about his career. I didn't know that he had a career. They say that he was in "Mash" with Donald Sutherland and Elliot Gould. I'll have to go back and take a look at that movie. Maybe I missed him in it.

Matthew