Anna and Ben sit down to visit the third most successful film of 1972, the slapstick comedy “What’s Up, Doc?” They discuss how the film compares to its obvious antecedents and whether Streisand’s character is more manipulative and callous than either Hepburn in “Bringing Up Baby” or any of Groucho’s schemers, and whether Bugs Bunny’s life has to be endangered to justify his actions. Of course you know that this means war…

Sources and References:

A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis chose What’s Up Doc? to be a selection in May 2020 as an early offering in the stay-at-home pandemic watchalongs the New York Times organized throughout the year. They also summarized what they felt were some of the pertinent reactions to the film from their own perspective and from some of the folks that tweeted along at home during their simultaneous streams. Peter Schjeldahl’s contemporaneous Times review is quoted by Scott and Dargis, while Pauline Kael’s dismissal is found in The New Yorker.

Two authoritative voices on how screwball comedies were more feminist than films made during the heyday of the Feminism movement: Kazuo Ishiguro for the BFI explains how Phillip Barry’s film Holiday is an example of the “proto-feminist” aspect of screwball comedies, and for RogerEbert.com, Matt Soller Zeitz interviews critic Molly Haskell about the book From Reverence to Rape and how the ’70s wave of male auteurs helped sideline women as characters and voices. Are these the specific comments and articles Ben was thinking of when he tried to paraphrase that mindset? Almost certainly not, but the Haskell interview is perhaps something he heard summarized or referred to.

Ben based much of his knowledge about the production of the film on what Bogdanovich says on the commentary track from the original DVD release that was ported over to the current Blu-Ray edition, but also from some key interviews with Buck Henry at the always invaluable Cinephilia & Beyond, where a copy of the screenplay can also be read. A version of the production history is summarized here at one of many, many internet Barbra fansites. Ben’s take on the transformation of A Glimpse of Tiger into What’s Up Doc? began with this oral history of the film and was refined after reading James Spada’s Streisand: A Life. Streisand’s autobiography had not yet been released at the time of the recording of this episode, although her take on What’s Up Doc? is not especially revelatory with regard to the varied reports on who was responsible for what. Reporting that perhaps lack of consent should be considered as part of a film’s rating was published here, and an exampled of beloved rom-coms getting called out for bad beahaviour is here.

Ben’s attitude about the legacy and reputation of Peter Bogdanovich, a filmmaker he’d had a lot of time for in his teens and early 20’s, were shaped by a combination of listening to Katrina Longworth’s podcast about Bogdanovich’s ex-wife Polly Platt and reading many articles about him after his death. Sometimes even his own words did the best of job of diminishing him somewhat in one’s eyes. Ah, well.

The trivia about the phrase “gloire énorme” was scrabbled together from a few sources that Ben might not have fully understood. The phrase appears in Victor Hugo’s “The Art of Being a Grandfather”, and the context and history of that text was gleaned from Wikipedia and the efforts of this translator. Quotations of contemporary critics using the phrase to describe Sarah Bernhardt were located via this podcast and in this 1933 biography of the legendary singer. The origins of the César Award came from Wikipedia as well, as does confirmation that there are only three types of rock.