The Malibu Film Society had its debut screening Sunday night with the Billy Wilder classic gender bender, “Some Like It Hot” at the Malibu Jewish Center and Synagogue, and it was a standing-room-only crowd.
All 125 seats were filled with an audience of movie buffs, budding filmmakers and local citizens looking for a pleasant night out of first-class entertainment. Judging from the roof-raising laughter, the Marilyn Monroe-Tony Curtis-Jack Lemmon comedy is just as potent today as it was when it premiered 50 years ago.
The script, written by Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond, is chockablock with superbly witty dialogue, from Monroe’s throwaway exclamation, “Real diamonds! They must be worth their weight in gold!” to vaudevillian exchanges like that between Lemmon, dressed as “Josephine” and his would-be suitor Osgood, played by Joe E. Brown:
Osgood: Which of these instruments do you play?
Jerry [Josephine]: Bull Fiddle.
Osgood: Fascinating. Do you use a bow or do you just pluck it?
Jerry: Actually, most of the time I slap it.
Osgood: You must be quite a girl.
Jerry: Wanna bet?
The Malibu Film Society, launched by a group of Malibu film buffs and industry stalwarts, aims to bring to the city’s broad film community a venue for films that might not normally get a screening here.
“We want to show art house movies, for lack of a better description,” said MFS Executive Director Scott Tallal, managing director of CommCinema, one of the partners in the society. “We have a great movie theater in town for first runs and we have CineMalibu for family films at Bluffs Park in the summer. But we want to be able to show documentaries, re-issued classics and foreign films that Malibu doesn’t always get to see.”
Membership in Malibu Film Society offers tickets to screenings of 18 movies a year at the MJCS, all on widescreen, using state-of-the-art DLP cinema projection with theater-quality sound. The society will also feature two gala events a year, one in August and one for screening the Academy Awards. Tallal promised a thought-provoking and noteworthy line up.
The Aug. 15 gala will feature “The Terminator,” James Cameron’s 1984 blockbuster that set the bar for modern-day science fiction films and cemented the action hero status of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Cameron will be on hand to introduce the film.
“None of this would have been possible without the support of Stan Winston’s family,” MFS cofounder Karen York said, speaking of the late master of cinematic special effects and makeup. “He was the guru of special effects for movies like ‘The Terminator’ and ‘Jurassic Park’ and his family donated the projection equipment in his name.”
September will see a fully restored Blue Ray print of “The Red Shoes,” the Oscar-winning 1948 dance fantasy that featured the ballet genius of Léonide Massine, principal choreographer for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, and introduced creative use of Technicolor and cinematography.
Also scheduled for the first half of the season is Woody Allen’s Oscar-winner “Annie Hall,” last year’s “Waltz with Bashir,” the Israeli animated documentary about the 1982 Lebanon War, and the 1919 silent film, “Daddy-Long-Legs,” starring Mary Pickford, which will feature a chamber orchestra conducted by Maria Newman.
Of the eclectic selection, Tallal said that schedules were not to be decided by a small group of people behind closed doors.
“We want suggestions from members, from the community,” Tallal said. “At some point, I’ll have to go back to my day job, so we encourage everyone to take part in our film submission program.”
Sunday evening’s viewers enjoyed popcorn and a chance to revisit what the American Film Institute hails as the funniest American comedy of all time.
In commentary before the film, MFS board member Steve Weinberg said, “I’m sure many of you will relate when you see Marilyn Monroe in that dress and think about what I thought about seeing this movie as a youth.”
MFS board member David Lyons said, “Our goal is to find quality films that have some relationship with Malibu. When this movie premiered 50 years ago, a gentleman pulled up in a limousine, made his way down the center aisle and sat in the front row. It was the retired chairman of Loew’s Wonder Theatres, my grandfather, Leopold Friedman.”
Malibu resident Dick Guttman is a longtime film publicist and knew the principals of the film.
“Billy Wilder was reputed to be tough, but he was always very cordial to me,” Guttman said. “We had to do a post production campaign on ‘Some Like It Hot’ to get it to sell. But it finally grew to a box office take of $15 million, which was pretty good back then. Now, of course, that would be a poor opening weekend.”
Director Wilder was famously impatient with Monroe’s unpredictable behavior during the films they made together, but Guttman quoted Wilder as saying, “When people see this movie 100 years from now, it won’t be because of me.”
“Some Like it Hot” went on to be a resounding success, winning Monroe a Golden Globe for her performance as a good-time-girl band member. But seeing Curtis and Lemmon negotiate walking in high heels while dressed as women to elude gangsters and watching Lemmon discover his inner Carmen Miranda while staving off romantic passes by a smitten Joe E. Brown are exercises in classic camp comedy.
Membership in the Malibu Film Society gives you tickets to all 18 annual screenings for $180, with VIP memberships providing tickets to the screenings and the two annual galas offered for $250. Sponsorships are also available. The Malibu Jewish Center and Synagogue, CommCinema and The Malibu Times are all partners in MFS.
“Malibu is unique in that we can bring in to our film society the people who create the film industry,” York said. “This is an idea whose time has come.”
More information about the Malibu Film Society can be obtained online at www.malibufilmsociety.org