Name: Siskel and Ebert - Stardust Memories
Uploaded: 2021-10-24T00:57:09.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Siskel and Ebert - Stardust Memories' from Norm and Other Stuff on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-10-24. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Siskel and Ebert - Stardust Memories' from Norm and Other Stuff on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-10-24. Transcript available.

Now we move on to a film where we both, I think, had big expectations.
I used to be able to say, for example, I can't think of a Woody Allen film I
don't like.
Unfortunately, now I can.
It is his latest one, Stardust Memories, in which Woody plays a put-upon comic
filmmaker named Sandy Bates
who hates all of the problems that success has brought him,
problems like the one he encounters when he meets his staff in his apartment.
The movie is filmed in black and white.
Can I please get your signature on this oil shelter thing?
Well, you told me cattle.
The cattle died.
Did Isabel call?
Has anybody given any thought to Time Magazine?
Because I said I'd get back to that.
Your cousin called.
He needs to borrow more money.
Oh, jeez.
Don't bug him about the Time cover.
He can do it after the weekend.
Hey, I don't want to go away this weekend.
Who needs a festival of my old films?
Sign here, please.
It's ridiculous.
Don't worry about that income tax thing.
I'll be with you when you're going to see the Treasury agents.
Treasury agents?
Since when is it that serious?
Look, Sandy, this is two lousy days.
You drive up there, they honor you, they show you films,
they ask you a couple of stupid questions, and you go home.
I don't want to be on it.
It's a hype.
Don't be ungrateful.
She's an important film critic.
You promised.
They sold a lot of tickets.
You can't back out.
You might enjoy it.
The nice, clean sea air.
Sandy, we've got to talk about the new picture.
What do you want me to say?
I don't want to make funny movies anymore.
They can't force me to.
You know, I don't feel funny.
I look around the world, and all I see is human suffering.
Human suffering doesn't sell tickets in Kansas City.
They want laughs in Kansas City.
They've been working in the wheat fields all day.
Hey, fellas, I'm getting a headache.
Can I please get some privacy?
Your problem is you never got over Nat Bernstein's death.
Of course I never got over.
The guy was 30 years old, never sick a day in his life, and then suddenly out
of left field,
amyotropic lateral sclerosis.
It was horrible.
He's laying there in the hospital.
His body degenerated like Lou Gehrig.
Two years this weekend at the seashore.
That's something you should take a month.
I don't want...
My mother used to take...
When I was a kid, my mother took me to the seashore.
Little old decaying hotels and awnings, you know?
These are valiums.
Oh, great.
Just another show business tranquilizer.
Hey, did anybody read on the front page of the Times that matter is decaying?
Am I the only one that saw that?
The universe is gradually breaking down.
There's not going to be anything left.
I'm not talking about my stupid little films here.
Eventually, there's not going to be any Beethoven or Shakespeare or...
Have a nice week.
Oh, great.
Well, eventually, the Woody Allen character does go to that weekend film
festival of his work,
where he is overrun by fans, by groupies, by film buffs,
and by the film critic who's hostess of the festival.
And eventually, the pressure of all that attention triggers a silent childhood
memory.
Everybody is just ecstatic that you're here this weekend.
The turnout is tremendous.
And you know, these film culture weekends are just absolutely fantastic.
They are getting so popular.
Do you know you're going to love our screening facilities?
When I had my Orson Welles weekend here, you know what he told me?
He said that I had the best sound and projection system he'd ever seen, bar
none, believe it or not.
He did.
That's what he said.
Oh, oh, this is Mr. Payson, our chairman.
And Mrs. Payson, they adore you.
We love your work.
My wife has seen all your films.
I especially like your early funny ones.
I'm Dick Lavelle.
I'm with the museum film department.
We have a collection of more than 20,000 friends.
This is my friend Libby.
She thinks you're a genius.
Libby just did a definitive cinematic study of Gummer Marx.
Interestingly, he's the one Marx brother that never made any movies.
I'm glad to have you here.
Here, please.
I'm really excited.
That scene has a charming, intentionally silent ending,
but this aloof director is not the kind of nice guy that Woody Allen usually
plays,
and stardust memories is not the usual Woody Allen comedy.
He seems to be indicting his fans in this picture and himself.
He's indicting everyone in the celebrity game.
But to do that, Allen has really stacked the deck against virtually everyone in
the film.
He plays an unpleasant character surrounded by a lot of other unpleasant
characters.
And Allen has his character deliver a lot of unpleasant jokes.
This is all an effort to tell us that Woody Allen hates to be asked for his
autograph, hates the whole celebrity game.
But he says that in the film's first ten minutes.
And then Stardust Memories has little more to say.
You know, Gene, I have to share your disappointment.
Usually, you know, you can kind of count on Woody Allen at about this time of
year after a summer of terrible movies.
Comes along in October with something pretty good.
But not this time.
I was really disappointed.
I think Stardust Memories is a one-note movie, as you suggested.
It's very shrill.
He has taken as his model a 1963 film by Federico Fellini called Eight and a
Half, which is on exactly the same subject.
And Allen also uses the same visual style in the black-and-white photography.
Fellini's film is about this director who's surrounded by sycophants and would-be
collaborators.
He's overworked.
He's harassed.
And yet, the Fellini film carries it through.
The guy works out his problems.
He comes to a terrible end, but nevertheless, he's done so by facing what's the
matter with him.
It's not true in Stardust Memories.
It just goes all along at one note.
He's mad, and then he's still mad, and then he's still mad about the same thing,
and then the movie is over.
There's another thing that bothers me about the film.
I sort of hate to see Woody Allen, so creative a person, sort of chase his tail
in this movie.
He seems to be focusing on the media's preoccupation with him, with people's
preoccupation with him.
He's giving in to the very problem that he wants to solve, and I think it's
just sort of unfortunate.
It seems to be a small subject for him to deal with, actually.
This movie is kind of self-defeating, actually.
You know, in one of the clips that we just showed, he talked about he doesn't
want to make funny movies anymore.
He doesn't feel funny.
I think, in a way, he feels ambiguous about humor, and he's so good at making
funny movies.
And I sound like one of the characters in the movie.
I liked the earlier movies better.
But recently, he's taken on two of the great directors.
His movie Interiors was based, in terms of visual style, on Ingmar Bergman.
Now comes this movie, based on 8 1⁄2, and even the first scenes are the same,
very similar.
I think if Woody Allen wants to find a great director to imitate, he doesn't
have to look any further than Woody Allen.
Well, I agree with you.
And the other thing I want to say is I understand the problem that he's trying
to deal with, at least I think I do.
And it's contained in that little, beautiful, silent memory of his childhood.
I guess what he's saying is, you know, when I was a little kid, all I wanted to
do was create magic, and that's what I want to do in my movies.
But, unfortunately, all this mess has come in on me.
Well, I understand that, and it's beautifully expressed in that one little bit.
But that's in the film's first 15 or 20 minutes.
Then, unfortunately, he adds nothing.
And that's the disappointment.
Unfortunately, we're both very disappointed.
Yep.
Yep.