let me have my toaster

 

Ned Beatty, American actor who passed away one week ago, was in some great movies --

Deliverance, 1972

Network, 1976

The Big Easy, 1986.

Deliverance, the ending where the local sheriff leans down and his face is right outside the car window and he says, "Don't ever do nothin' like this again.  Don't come back up heah."

     Four years later, Network comes out -- "Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials, and I won't say anything!  Just leave us alone!"  I remember seeing a preview and thinking, "Boy, I really want to see this movie."  

Such an odd, unusual film--even for the Seventies.  It has a unique vibe, and is photographed in low, smudgy light.  Faye Dunaway acts with a bold, spontaneous flair; William Holden--such a human cipher; Ned Beatty, scarily and comically bombastic in his single scene....

     And then it's 10 years until The Big Easy comes out...  An overlooked and forgotten film today, it is terrific, in my opinion -- belongs in the DVD library of any film enthusiast.  

Mystery!  Action!  Romance!  New Orleans!  Dennis Quaid!  

(When Ellen Barkin, distressed by his laid-back attitude while interviewing a "wise guy," calls him obsequious he reaches into a desk drawer and whips out a paperback dictionary to look it up... he is so cute.)

     An '80s attitude, sunny cinematography, and powerful, seductive Cajun music--it's an atmosphere you're glad you walked into, right from the beginning.

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^^ Where you coming from?  Don't you ever sleep?

^^ Only when the music stops, cher.

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