1981's "The Four Seasons"

Who in the fuck would want to watch that shit?

I would, for one. I remember this movie which I skipped because at the time I couldn't stand Alan Alda and his constant fake smile or Carol Burnett's ugly mug, but I would watch it now.

I watched it recently. It’s good. Not great. But entertaining.

I saw it in ‘81 and again last year.

I enjoy the nostalgia element of old movies like these.

Where would Beth Jarrett fit in to this group?

She's got the right fashion for it. So much beige!

For some strange reason I watched this several times when it was on HBO circa 1983. I was 12.

I've always hated Jack Weston. I've never made it through the entire film mostly because he's in it.

Plus it couldn't hold my interest.

Rita played an Italian and deprived a real Italian actress of a job.

Related

R6 Same! I was also obsessed with The Big Chill and Sophie’s Choice. Lil’ 12 year old fagola!

R2 your reply translates to this:

I’m old now, so fuck it, I’ll watch anything.

Bess Armstrong was great in this.

We saw Len Cariou’s bare ass.

Alan Alda wanted Bruce Dern for the Len Cariou part.

R14, Len was still basking in his Tony winning Sweeney Todd success.

Worth watching for the great Sandy Dennis and Bess Armstrong. I thought Alda and Burnett were dreadful.

Would it have killed them to give Frankie Valli a cameo?

So funny. I fucking HATE Alan Alda, even when I was a little boy and my dad watched Mash reruns on tv- HATE THAT PRICK.

And I think the best role for him EVER (because it was really him) was this campy as FUCK role in Whispers In The Dark starring Annabelle Sciorra.

You will never look at a bottle of red wine in the same way!!!!

A 90's camp classic. 1992 or so. Check it out!!

Very much in that early 90's thriller vein- think Basic Instinct meets Sliver

I remember watching this with my parents when it came out as a cable preview - it felt like a very grown-up movie. Most of it undoubtedly sailed past my small idiot child head, but I remember Carol Burnett screaming "Your Mercedes sucks!"

I don’t watch shit like this

What shit do you watch, R20?

I like shit that is interesting like 227 reruns!

R22 is clearly a Harvard grad and has elite tastes..

Cariou wasn't hot but weirdly fuckable.

[quote] Where would Beth Jarrett fit in to this group?

Interestingly, I remember at the time this was talked about in the press as Alan Alda's answer to "Ordinary People," since it was also about marital discord among well-to-do WASPs. But then the critics didn't like it very much.

R24, Indeed he was.

I too enjoyed this movie in my youth. I rewatched this again about two years ago and it was still enjoyable. I guess it was similar to Woody Allen films, Ordinary People, Shoot The Moon . . . ; not plot driven, more character study/driven with intellent dialog. I was a smart kid who longed for a different life and couldn't wait to be a sophisticated adult with adult problems.

I've never liked Len Cariou. There's something about him that is evil.

This film is not even in the same league as Shoot The Moon-- A fucking masterpiece. Damn, I need to watch that one again.

The Four Seasons is one of the most underrated films of the 80s. The whole cast is sublime. Jack Weston was nominated for an Oscar for his performance.

It was like a Lifetime movie, before Lifetime.

I'm pretty sure my date and I walked out.

I saw this film when it came out, and remember liking it a lot. Good ensemble. I can still hear Jack Weston yelling "My Mercedes!" as it sinks.

R30 No, he most definitely was not.

The poster is creepy.

this R30 creature- This bitch is 120 years old!

The whole cast was sublime!!!

ROTFLMAO

Yeah - Alan Alda and Carol Burnett on that plaster ensures I will never see it. Horrible combination. Bad idea.

A skillful exercise in faux-Neil Simon, put over by a cast who knows just what to do.

Alda never really made it as a film leading actor though he was good in supporting roles. Same really for Burnett. The only one of the cast who did, briefly, was Sandy Dennis.

So boring and wannabe pretentious with the Vivaldi.

R34 What's with the teeth? I know Burnett and Alda both have wide-set mouths, but neither of them looks anything like that in real life. It's freaky!

I prefer A Change of Seasons and The Last Married Couple in America…they were almost “so bad they’re good.” Key word = Almost.

But they were all part of the marital discord trend of movies which ran the gamut from high drama to low comedy and began with An Unmarried Woman in 1978 and breathed its last breath with Blame it on Rio in 1984. The peak output years were 1980 and 1981…Starting Over, Making Love, A Change of Seasons, and yes: The Four Seasons.

(You also had the very-late-to-the-game Just Between Friends in 1986…that movie seemed like a long con of Mary’s team to convince someone she was bankable at the box office and was little more than an ego trip for Mary to show off her Aerobics class skills.)

Rita Moreno told me that "The Four Seasons" was the movie she and her husband would watch every Christmas Eve.

[quote] I’m old now, so fuck it, I’ll watch anything.

No, but I'm with the guy who says he'll watch some of these titles for the nostalgia (R4).

There was also a TV series spinoff but I'm too lazy to Google it.

Isn't there a scene where one of the characters falls through the ice on a lake, and another of the characters has to run and get help?

One of the two is Rita Moreno but I forget which one she is and who the other one is.

The tv version starred TV also-ran Marcia Rodd.

It’s a pretty movie to watch with the great scenery, but Alan Alda’s daughters were dreadful.

R47 Even as the film’s director and producer, he had a lot of balls casting TWO of his own children in a film with so few speaking parts.

Goddamn MASH got him anything he wanted back then.

🕺 🕺 🕺 🕺 thought this was about the Jersey Boys.

Once Alda took control of MASH and made it less of an ensemble show and more about Hawkeye it sucked. That's happened with a few other TV shows,too.

R28, How many men can say they fucked Lauren Bacall and Glenn Close?

R51. Never made a pass at me

Smarmy Alan Alda ruins EVERYTHING !

I didn't realize critics disliked the movie, I seem to recall ads for the movie and mentions of it EVERYWHERE when it came out, and what to my little kid ears sounded like universally rave reviews. It was on cable a lot in the early 1990s and I remember thinking that it was a lot more boring than I'd expected, plus Sandy Dennis was given a really thankless role that she didn't deserve.

R52 I guess even he had his standards.

[quote]I guess it was similar to Woody Allen films, Ordinary People, Shoot The Moon

Robert Redford directed ORDINARY PEOPLE and Alan Parker directed SHOOT THE MOON, not Woody Allen.

Alda cast his two heavy daughters to play his and Burnett’s and Moreno and Weston’s daughters in this film. They looked liked twins of different parents. They had the briefest scenes and no talent. They acted like this wasn’t their idea!

Alda even gets to bray that infamous laugh of his in case you were wondering. I would still watch it just to see his daughters "act." "Nepo" gone horribly wrong.

R57. Casting your talent free daughter is always a mistake.

It was shocking for this kid to hear Carol Burnett say, "Shit or get off the pot!"

I thought it was a shit and marijuana reference. And it made no sense.

I hated this movie. Alda was so full of himself. This was yet another tired story about upper middle class white New Yorkers and their First World problems. Talky, meandering and pretentious af.

R39 Vivaldi is not pretentious. Vivaldi is popular music for the masses. Everyone loves Vivaldi, which is why his music is used in so many films and TV shows. My Brilliant Friend, for example.

Vivaldi is not pretentious, but THE FOUR SEASONS is.

I actually like Carol Burnett better when she does drama as opposed to comedy. I find her comedy too broad and muggy.

Funny because I actually watched this a few weeks ago after not seeing it for years. I enjoyed it but didn't buy Weston and Morena as a couple. Can't blame the one husband sick of wispy Sandy Dennis and her photos of vegetables either. I remember reading that this movie was going to make Armstrong a big star but it didn't. Alda's daughters were awful. He actually had enough pull to wrangle a tv pilot for one of them.

The teens were even whiny back then. Nothing has changed.

Sandy Dennis always epitomized the East Coast, highly educated, homely intellectuals with shapeless cardigans and sensible shoes types.

If Julie Andrews had played Alda's part I'd probably watch this shlock.

Sandy Dennis was wonderful, she elevated the synthetic material here. Bess Armstrong did nice work as well.

The very short-lived TV show had three actors from the movie: Jack Weston, aaaaaaand... the Alda sisters.

r62 no kidding…hence “wannabe pretentious.” Like what people in Shaker Heights think is the utmost in sophistication.

Jack Weston's younger brother was hardcore pornographic film maker Anthony Spinelli, one of the most successful directors of The Golden Age of Porn.

r70 And Tony Roberts. He goes to the same fancy eye doctor as my father and I have seen him there twice. He likes to make phone calls in the waiting room using his basso profondo “sing out louise” voice, always announcing “This is Tony Roberts. I’m calling for ______.”

Lee Grant also goes there and she is very tiny and shriveled, like a wig on a popsicle stick.

Did Spinelli ever cast his sister-in-law, r72?

R73, Lee Grant is 95 years old.

The bastard at r73 made me laugh.

Funny you should find Alan Alda unsexy since he played a womanizer on MASH though later ashamed to be. I think his father was sexy and he had that gorgeous speaking voice.

Dear God, this was an awful movie. There’s that painfully pretentious bit where Alan Alda’s character gives a toast to the wine and cheese they’ve brought to a picnic. I wanted to jump through the screen and smack the shit out of him. Wasn’t Sweet Liberty the next film Alda made? That was even worse than The Four Seasons. Sorry, Alan, back to TV for you.

I think the best bits are those Alan wrote for other people like Jack Weston's speech about his terrors and Carol Burnett raging at how angry she is at Alda.

Bess Armstrong was also Dead Sara Sheffield on The Nanny.

She popped up at the end of the S1 finale in an uncredited cameo, while the family watched old home movies. Sara was seen playing with & cuddling Gracie as a toddler (no dialogue). She reappeared in The Wedding episode (as a ghost) to talk Max down from his pre-wedding jitters, give her blessing to move on with Fran, etc.

(Also: Bess Armstrong & Charles Shaughnessy....Very Pretty Together! And seemed to have nice chemistry. I would have watched that show.)

[quote]Casting your talent free daughter is always a mistake.

I beg to differ!

Obviously Rutanya had all the talent in that family.

Alan Alda is the embodiment of middle brow culture.

R56 sorry, you are correct. I meant to say: Woody Allen films (Manhattan, Interiors, Hannah And Her Sisters), and also, movies such as Ordinary People, Shoot The Moon, Just Between Friends, Terms Of Endearment and similar.

Bess Armstrong is wonderful as the mom on My So Called Life.

All this Alan Alda hate reminds of this quote on GOLDEN GIRLS:

DOROTHY: (concerned that her mother is becoming forgetful) I guess I've just been hoping that things would improve by themselves.. You know, I never thought Ma would lose her memory. Of course, I never thought Alan Alda would get on my nerves.

😂

Weston was also married to Marge Redmond aka sister Liguori in the DL fave movie the trouble with angels and as the evil illiterate cunt Lolly Perdue on Mamas Family.

The whole cast should have been Oscar nominated. It's a brilliant movie.

^ Alan

R88 I think these days it would have gotten Best Cast Ensemble* at the SAGs.

*or whatever the category is called

A studio feature like this was a big step up from when Burnett and Alda were teamed in the long-unseen TV version of the middling stage comedy 6 RMS RIV VU.

Alda is very good playing a fake, pretentious douche in Crimes and Misdemeanors.

R82, Rutanya Alda isn’t related to Alan Alda. Her real last name is something Eastern European.

Rutanya Alda was born Rutanja Skrastiņa (Rūta Skrastiņa) in Riga, in German-occupied Latvia.

This film is the perfect middlebrow nostalgia fest for those of us who remember the idyllic time. The dialogue is bright and the characters believable. Alan Alda’s kids are pretty bad. Tina Fey has bought the rights to a remake.

I will hate Fey if she remakes this shit.

I hate her already. She's NOT a movie star.

Just rewatched it, thanks to this thread. Yeah, Alda's kids were bad. Rest of the cast was very good. Alda's character is extremely unlikable -at least he was to me. Rita Moreno's character was underwritten -a waste of a great actress. Weirdly, I got a gay vibe thing going on between Alda's and Cariou's characters. One-sided. If this film were made today, Alda's character would secretly have the hots for his friend, and be jealous of his new, young wife.

Sandy Dennis's vocal tic has always driven me crazy. I just can't stand listening to her stammering delivery. Which is a shame, because she was in some good movies. If I had been Cariou in this film I wouldn't have divorced her -I'd have killed her.

Wasn’t Sandy Dennis getting banged by Eric Roberts during production of this film? I bet Rita was jealous.

Sandy was bi, wasn't she?

r93 Alan Alda's family name isn't Alda either. His father's birth name was Alfonso Giuseppe Giovanni Roberto D'Abruzzo.

On TCM this Thursday at 10PM Eastern.

The Nepo Baby Alda sisters were the standouts of the film with their sizzling 80s energy. Elizabeth Alda played the daughter of Alan Alda and Carol Burnette while Beatrice Alda played against type as the daughter of Len Cariou and Sandy Dennis.

Alda did a good job with "Sweet Liberty" where he also wrote, directed and starred. Got a great cast, Michael Caine, Bob Hoskins, Michelle Pfeiffer and such. He got to shoot in The Hamptons all summer substituting for North Carolina.

I loved this as 12 year old who wanted to runaway to New York and lived a sophisticated life where I would have a fabulous apartment and go on vacation four times a year with my friends. When it actually occurred, the reality was nothing like it at all, but at least I never had ugly daughters with thick ankles.

I was a kid when this came out and I remember the TV commercials with The Four Seasons playing. I knew Alda and Burnett from TV and I also had that sensation of it seeming like a very adult thing to watch. A couple years ago I watched the first 30 minutes or so on some streaming service and turned it off, it was so stilted and bad. And I *like* Alan Alda!

R104, Excuse me?

I was in junior high in 1981, and I remember one of the women in our neighborhood told my mom she hated The Four Seasons but loved Cannonball Run.

R104, Sweet Liberty was a horrible movie and a box office flop for a reason.

Interesting trivia: all of the leads except Bess Armstrong starred in at least two Broadway musicals.

Sandy Dennis could sing?

So why does this OP keep posting about random movies and just spewing the quotes about it?

The DL has come to this?

Cheesy movie.

^ literally as there is a cheese eating scene.

What's the deal with Sandy Dennis? Did she have a stroke or something? Was it a speech impediment, or false teeth?

I was born years after this movie was made, and decades after her Oscar win, so I don't get it. Why does she talk and act the way she does?

I believe she studied at the Actors Studio and this was her attempt at realistic speech.

SHALIMAR!!!!!!!!!!???

Did someone say Shalamar?!

I also watched this multiple times about age 12 on television in the early 80s, but I don’t think we had HBO.

Not much has stayed with me, but were they vacationing on a boat at one point?

R115 That was her schtick. She became a critics' darling doing that on Broadway, so she never let go of it. Eventually, even the critics became fed up, but she never stopped with the eye-bugging, hand-waving, stuttering, stammering delivery.

I actually liked Bess Armstrong more than Sandy Dennis.

Sandy’s character was a genuine flake and depressing. Bess was fun, kind, and tried her best to get along with these assholes.

ElderLez: yep, the summer segment was spent on a boat. That was also the first time the new girlfriend joined them, which was a brilliant idea all around: very close quarters with middle-aged "stud" and his new hot young thing.

[quote]literally as there is a cheese eating scene.

But were there any surrender monkeys?

What is Bess Armstrong doing these days?

There were a bunch of movies that ran incessantly on HBO in the early 80s, and this was one of them, I bet I watched it a dozen times. There’s a whole segment of kids from that era that had HBO that probably watched all kinds of grown-up movies, just because they were on; it was still a huge novelty to be able to view newish movies without cut nudity and profanity and commercials basically multiple times a week. I mean, I watched all kinds of weird non-kids dramas over and over, like Ordinary People, Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice, Midnight Express…..

That was part of the charm of cable in its early days in the early/mid 80s. There were fewer options and the cable networks would buy the rights to screen something and they'd show it constantly.

I must have seen the last 2/3's of "Same Time Next Year" with Alda and Ellen Burstyn a hundred times but very seldom did I get to see the first part.

R125, Another movie I recall HBO playing repeatedly then was “The Thief Who Came to Dinner”, starring Ryan O’Neal and Jacqueline Bisset.

I remember when my family got HBO in the late 1980s, JUST ONE OF THE GUYS was on constant rotation for a few years.

[quote]I must have seen the last 2/3's of "Same Time Next Year" with Alda and Ellen Burstyn a hundred times but very seldom did I get to see the first part.

Wonder why Alda got the movie when Charles Grodin starred with Burstyn on Broadway, was Tony nominated and already had "The Heartbreak Kid" and "King Kong" on his resume?

R124: She plays a judge on BOSCH, and is in Showtime's series I LOVE THAT FOR YOU. But most importantly, she hasn't fucked around with her face too much and still looks like Bess Armstrong:

It's on TCM tonight along with The Ritz in a Rita Moreno double-bill.

I kept hoping Rita Moreno would fall off the boat and drown.

And Sandy Dennis is at her worst "post nasal drip" acting style here.

Alda has some crude lines which I may be paraphrasing:

When one of them farts they act like its Guy Lombardo

You can take your arm off my shoulder and stick it up your ass.

And Burnett's I say this with love, Shit or get off the pot,

I hope craft services provide toothpicks to Moreno so she could pick her teeth after all the scenery chewing she did.

IIRC Moreno sports a dry-looking perm.

As opposed to a wet Jheri Curl?

R134, I always figured her character in The Four Seasons was the same exact character as Renee from her backdoor pilot Golden Girls episode Renee and that Paul Dooley was the tv version of Jack Weston.

[quote] Lee Grant also goes there and she is very tiny and shriveled, like a wig on a popsicle stick.

Funny, she always looked 10 feet tall to me on the screen. Same with Joan Crawford.

[QUOTE]It's on TCM tonight along with The Ritz in a Rita Moreno double-bill.

Actually they are also showing "Carnal Knowledge" and "Happy Birthday Gemini" with Moreno so it's a quadrupal feature.bill.

Did Moreno die recently? Why such a unwarranted celebration of her cinematic work?

Because she is Latina!

I'd rather have a double mastectomy than watch a Rita Moreno double bill.

And I'm a man.

In 1962, the Academy members had an opportunity to award an Oscar to Judy to make up for robbing her of one for “A Star is Born”.

Instead, they gave it to Rita Moreno.

I don’t remember Judy being in West Side Story, I hope she didn’t play Puerto Rican.

[quote]I enjoyed it but didn't buy Weston and Morena as a couple

Me neither, and it made me barf up a little.

[quote]the daughter of Alan Alda and Carol Burnette

You're on all of these threads misspelling carol BURNETT. "Burnette" isn't even an alternate spelling.

One good thing - I totally believed Carol and Alda as spouses. Today the casting wouldn't be like that.

Sandy wasn't any more mannered than Page or Stanley.

OH! Now I understand all of the Rita Moreno hate - she "stole" the Oscar from Judy, and of course, brags about being with Brando.

[quote]Sandy was bi, wasn't she?

From what I heard, she was "bi" now and then but mostly lesbian or celibate.

Who did you hear that from, r148?

Theater people I knew around 1980.

Sandy Dennis lived with Gerry Mulligan for years and then Eric Roberts.

We know, R151.

R150 so hearsay.

R128, that one and I remember Time After Time, , Tim, Terror Vision and some ghost movie with Eddie Albert Jr and some blonde Brit actress set in Japan

It’s on tonight WITH -more importantly - The Ritz! The most amazing remnant of 1970s - all about a gay bathhouse. When I first stumbled across this movie, I was in shock. In 1976(!) there was a major film set in a gay bathhouse with gay men. So much more advanced than I ever imagined for 1976.:

R155 And Bette Midler & Barry Manilow weren’t in it is even more shocking!

Sandy Dennis was basically Julia Roberts' sister-in-law

R157 That's a long list. Eric Roberts has fucked everybody!

[quote]It's on TCM tonight along with The Ritz in a Rita Moreno double-bill.

And why can't it be a JACK WESTON double bill?

In "The Ritz" On Broadway, the role Treat Williams played a towel and high voice was played by disgraced actor Stephen Collins.

I have no memory of this being in cinemas, and my family didn't have HBO in the 80s. The trailer made me want to watch it. I grew up in a low-rent urban-sprawl nowhere with my single mom--this upper middle class, outdoorsy, Updike WASP life is something I always idealized.

All of these years I thought this was a Neil Simon play.

R162, Please!

Town & Country was a horrible version of this movie. Lots of rich white people lamenting their rich white people problems.

R164 Communist!

r138 Definitely tiny. When I realized it was Lee, I told her I loved her work. She was cordial and said “thank you,” and after a few moments she fell asleep in the waiting room chair.

Lee Grant should be given a Kennedy Center honor. Great actress, director, activist. But that will never happen.

Why not?

I remember Paul Mazursky’s film Tempest being on HBO a lot back when I was a teenager and I often pleasured myself thinking about sucking Sam Robard’s nipples while getting balonga’d by Raul Julia’s bonnie johnny

[quote] Sam Robard’s nipples

Oh, dear.

I really hated Jack Wrston as an actor. Too whiney!

I loved this movie, but would be scared to see it again lest it ruin the memory. Not so fun fact. I worked w Alan Alda for several years. Entitled doesn’t even begin to describe him.

R172, Isn’t he battling Parkinson’s Disease?

Who remembers “The Hathaways”?

Sandy and Eric should have done "Pretty Woman."

I went down an Ellen Barkin rabbit hole after the couple of threads on here and it said Eric Roberts cheated on Sandy Dennis with her. Dennis then broke off the engagement by throwing her ring on the floor.

Imagine being Sandy Dennis, and looking like she did, and getting a fuckin' hot piece of dick like Eric Roberts. It must've blown her fucking mind.

R172 he was really off putting and unpleasant of the Gilbert Gottfried podcast. Really full of himself for starters.

R178, Back in the 1970s, Alan Alda was heralded as the perfect male, mainly by the women’s movement, because he was a staunch feminist and he was married to a woman who was far less attractive than he was.

And he's still married to that same woman. They're going on 66 years now. Good for them.

R279 And he had unattractive daughters that he put into the movies irregardless.

R179 Alan Alda and Phil Donahue right?

I didn’t grow up then, but so I’ve heard.

First movie I ever saw Alda in was Crimes and Misdemeanors and he was FUCKING HILARIOUS - I wasn’t aware of this whole other persona he was leaving behind/sending up at the time.

Alan Alda had the sex appeal of Woody Allen. Whiny, wheedling, not masculine. IMO, anyway.

R173, I’ve heard he has a chronic health issue. Total sympathy on that. This was before then & more about how he behaved w people who had less power. In some cases he wasn’t wrong, but needed to be more constructive IMO.

I am struggling through this film. It’s a lot of “actors acting”. The goofy explosive fake laughter and false joviality is from that period. Alda and Burnett have flashes of poignancy, but the good parts of this film are lost in cheesy plot devices (lots of cackling and jumping into water).

The conflict feels “constructed”, and each actor has a “big scene”. Some carry theirs off way better than others. It’s like a jazz performance with these inset “solos”. Alda’s big crescendo where he smashes everything and rips a moose head off the wall is rough to watch, embarrassing. You wonder if he was “the guy”, directing and starring in the film at the peak of his career, with lots of control over everyone and everything. The two daughters were so homely and inert that I almost mistook the moose head Alda drags around during his masterful “Marlon Brando/Grayson Hall” burst of outrage for a third one. I will admit Alda was pretty attractive at his peak, tall and striking, moving confidently on camera, probably even more confidently off camera.

Rita Moreno is lost in the mix, pretty inept at serving up a caricature “feisty Italian broad” from Central Casting. Someone must have said between takes “fuck it…just TELL the camera you’re playing Italian broad!” because she actually does does that, twice.

I wonder if these actors got along. The fully differentiated color palette of costumes on that weird, implausible boat scene makes me wonder if they all wanted to be admired most. They look like different brands of canned ham on a shelf at the supermarket. I feel bad for them cramped into cars and boats.

The sinking Mercedes is a symbol of ephemeral false pride and materialism, see? Hnnkay?

R176 - I didn't read that they were engaged. It always seemed to me that Eric was using Sandy for her connections as a hungry actor on an older famous woman though her fame had faded.

I like this film more than The Big Chill.

I know that's not saying much. But, back then, The Big Chill had a better reputation.

Alda's grappling with the moose head is supposed to be funny since it is the inevitable explosion of his pent up rage but given a comic spin.

Now I know where Tyler Perry got the idea for Why Did I Get Married from.

R73- Wig on a popsicle stick

You’re one nasty queen 👸!

Please, sit next to me.

R155- It was filmed in the UK.

[quote]Tony Roberts. He goes to the same fancy eye doctor as my father and I have seen him there twice.

Does Tony Roberts still have a great ass?

R187 I see them together, characters set into tableaux, “punched up” dialogue/monologues, and musical scores to drive mood and emotion. Bill Chill’s soundtrack sold well, but even as a kid I thought it sounded like a series of yuppy anthems.

These films (talky emotional “dramedies”) are going through an awkward phase in the history of cinema. I think Douglas Sirk’s melodramas went through this, too, until we looked at them differently over time (with some clever parodies like Waters’ Polyester). Maybe we will appreciate them more in another decade or two. Forrest Gump is another example of “involving” music emotionally in a plot. It sells but can be tough on the stomach and ears, “cringey”.

R16 that’s unfortunately true, Alda and Burnett do lapse into pretty dreadful overacting, stinky cheese territory. A better director could have helped them, but Alda at the helm, at the peak of his fame and influence, looks like it clouded the film’s composition. You really do see Sandy Dennis’ acting, (and some of Armstrong’s) as an order of magnitude above Alda’s and Burnett’s.

The film’s poster shows two giant cartoon heads of Alda & Burnett, looking like the evil ventriloquist’s puppet in the film Magic (same cinematographer). The poster is true to form.

The noisy sex on the sailboat scene feels implausible. One of these characters, if they were really adults, would have tried to protect the dignity of that couple.

I found the movie quite watchable.

Do we ever get to see Rita's painting? I remember she brings a canvas to the first season's trip.

Sandy Dennis said in an interview that she was lazy and not ambitious enough and that hurt her career. She was very unique and died much too young.

I can hear Rita telling Alda - Now Alan. If I'm going to play a painter, I just have to do my own work for the integrity of the character.

R73 That’s pretty cool. You see Tina Louise around midtown and that description suits here, too.

God Lee Grant was sexy during her prime. That face photographed beautifully.

Tony Roberts is exactly as you describe. Everyone I know who has run into him in NYC says exactly the same thing about him.

R200 LG cops to extensive plastic surgery as a young woman in her somewhat angry memoir.

R201 I heard some interviews with Lee Grant on NPR and other outlets. She dealt with a lot of disappointment.

R201, Lee Grant also came clean about her age recently. Like Cicely Tyson, she had been fudging her age by quite a few years.

Cicely Tyson is dead.

I got Lee Grant's autobiography at the Dollar Tree a while ago. I guess I should give it a read.

Cariou wasn't hot hot, but sort of fuckable in a DILFy dadbod way.

r204 What? No "BREAKING NEWS"?

Carol Burnett laughing at Jack Weston for being afraid of the elastic in his underwear is hysterical.

Hey, lay off the Alda sisters, they were the Apatow sisters of their day.

And every bit as insufferable as them, R209.

I watched this today due to this thread. It wasn’t perfect, but I’m glad I watched. Thanks, OP!

I just checked. It's available to watch in Netflix.

[quote]he was married to a woman who was far less attractive than he was.

I don't think that's possible

Four turds in the toilet

One got flushed

They always have such tasteful sweaters in the winter segment, and it changes with every scene. Each person must've brought five knit wool sweaters for a single ski weekend.

It played on cable ENDLESSLY in 1982, then for awhile in the 80s. I was 14 when it came out and can’t even remember it on the big screen, but watched it a lot on cable. The cast had great chemistry. Overall a good film that you can watch a few times. I can definitely relate it to more in my 50s. Yeah it’s got some cringey stuff like the Alda wine toast to cheese, and when he busts up the cabin with the moose head, but it’s minor. I would’ve loved to seen more of Sandy in her role, but it wasn’t what the story dictated.

This was the movie I remember played constantly on HBO in 1981/82.

R217, Another was “Author, Author”, with Al Pacino and Dyan Cannon.

Before he wrestles the moose head doesn't Alan break some plates? I'm thinking whose gonna pay for the damage?

R202 you’re absolutely right, but I remember thinking it was a bit of a karma fest.

Watched "Happy Birthday, Gemini" part of TMC's Rita package based on the hit Broadway play "Gemini". After the first fifteen minutes which is very manic, it settles into a nice little movie. Rita was very good in it.

[quote]Four turds in the toilet

Is that sequel to "Three Coins in the Fountain?"

The girl in Happy Birthday, Gemini, Sarah Holcomb, was fired from Jaws 2 and left the business shortly thereafter. She looked like Lori Singer. Damn, David Marshall Grant was a hot twink. I bet he let himself get pounded by Robert Viharo in the hotel they stayed at.

I rewatched a bit of it. It was funny when Alda and Burnett were laughing at the sounds of the lovemaking next door in the boat.

All this chitchat about the movie so now I'm watching it again on Netflix.

It's a very hetero movie but inoffensive hetero.

The sad sack daughter gave off very Lesbionic vibes.

I like Burnett and Moreno's silent reactions on the boat when Bess Amstrong is talking about how wonderful Len Cariou is.

[quote]Carol Burnett laughing at Jack Weston for being afraid of the elastic in his underwear is hysterical.

How that stupidity remained in the script is ludicrous. Oh, yeah, Alan Alda write and directed the film.

Why did Carol Burnett look so unattractive in every scene?

I know it's a bit off topic but I really like the 1979 Chevrolet Impala Station Wagon Alan Alda is driving when he picks everyone up to drive to the country. They don't make big comfortable American cars like that anymore- I like the styling too.

-not because it's a great movie ( datalounge queens don't hate me for this) but this movie could be on a list of movies that I can watch over and over

R229, because Carol was not wearing her red Carol Burnett Show wigs.

R232- I did not know she wore wigs on her variety show till now.

I can remember when Gary Burghoff had an active Twitter account in the early days of Twitter, he would go on long, seemingly drunken tweetstorms where he'd post just viciously about Alda. Never by name - he had some scatological nickname like "the piece of shit" or something like that for him -- it was clear who he was talking about. It was something.

More recently I listened to most of an episode of Alda's podcast (I'm not a regular listener, I swear!) that featured all the MASH regulars who are still alive (Burghoff, Loretta Swit, Mike Farrell, Jamie Farr). And Burghoff was in total ass-kisser mode, praising Alda lavishly for his creativity, influence on MASH etc. I don't know if he got sober or just wanted the public exposure or what but it was quite an about face.

R234- I know that Jamie Farr could not stand Alan Alda either.

I don't want to eat it I want to make love to it.

I actually liked Alda in Same Time, Next Year. I think Ellen Burstyn brought out the best in him.

[quote]I can remember when Gary Burghoff had an active Twitter account in the early days of Twitter, he would go on long, seemingly drunken tweetstorms where he'd post just viciously about Alda. Never by name - he had some scatological nickname like "the piece of shit" or something like that for him -- it was clear who he was talking about. It was something.

Maybe he was actually talking about McLean Stevenson who had a terrible reputation and didn't get along with the producers.

Alda was fine in Same Time Next Year but when he had to cry he was awful.

1980: When Michael Murphy and John Mahoney weren’t available, call … Len Cariou.

R240- John Mahoney the father from Frasier reminds me so much of Len Cariou- same kind of big boned husky-ish build too.

R228 whatever. It was really funny, the way they played it. Still makes me laugh.

I would've thought Bess Armstrong would've had a bigger career. I guess she just never really found the right vehicle.

[quote]There were a bunch of movies that ran incessantly on HBO in the early 80s, and this was one of them

One of them was Educating Rita, wasn't it?

A lot of those 80s cable staples were still playing on cable into the 1990s as filler, usually very early Sunday mornings.

[quote]I can remember when Gary Burghoff had an active Twitter account in the early days of Twitter, he would go on long, seemingly drunken tweetstorms where he'd post just viciously about Alda.

It may have been someone else? Gary's Twitter is only from 2016 and it's mostly cheap one-liners.

It was definitely him r245. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if he deleted his original account and started a new one, he really did come across as pathetic and bitter. I remember texting about it at the time with a friend who’s also a MASH fanboy.

R233, in the first few seasons she didn't. Carol was also fatter and looked remarkably better.

I read way back in the 1970s that Gary Burghoff was a difficult SOB.

Don't really get the Bess Armstrong love. To me she was a skinny whiny blond who I could see as a mother in a sitcom at most.

Gary Burghoff was on Match Game for a week and gave off a vibe of thinking he was more popular and funnier than he was. You could feel the other panelists kind of leaning away from him.

....

Bess Armstrong was outstanding on “My So-Called Life”. I remember one episode when Angela/Claire Danes had a pimple, which sent her into tailspin, and her mom (Armstrong) commented on how she wished SHE had taken the time to enjoy HER teen years more, and not sweat the small stuff. She had a line, something to the effect of “I was a pretty girl” which could have been cringeworthy, but Armstrong was wonderful in the scene — and on the show overall!

R147 she was really, really skinny in the Carol Burnett show and in Annie - especially for an actress who was already in her 40s - I always noticed that (Anne Bancroft too). It couldn’t have been “natural” for either.

Yes if you look at Sandy and Geraldine Page they both got heavy. Kim Stanley got heavier a little earlier.

Had a look after reading this post. I liked Carol in it. Otherwise it was ok. Oddly i didn’t remember it but back then it was teen sex comidies & slashers for me. What other movies from then should i look for?

R254 Ordinary People, of course.

Also The Big Chill (the sassy stoner sister to this film).

Sweet Liberty is another Alda ensembler.

No, really R256?

Is the Mephisto Waltz good?

From memory it's pretty silly but Jackie looks gorgeous.

R259- I didn't know that Jackie O was an actress too.

watch

MEPHISTO WALTZ -- based on the novel by the unforgettably named Fred Mustard Stewart -- is a shameless ROSEMARY'S BABY knockoff without a scintilla of suspense. I think that it's the only Barbara Parkins film that I've seen other than you-know-what. Jacqueline Bisset gives it all she's got, but it's not enough. Alda is hilariously miscast.

I’m watching it right now. It it at times painfully earnest.

R261, Is it safe to watch a movie on that website?

R264, Sure, go ahead.

I’m disappointed that OP didn’t include a poll asking about which of the four seasons in the movie was each person’s favorite. Way to drop the ball OP.

R266 Given the way Alda laid out the four seasons and three acts, I doubt you'd see many people expressing a profound preference.

Spring was a short segment, and focused mainly on Nick's decision to leave his wife.

Summer was on the sailboat and the funniest segment. It also had sex, skinny-dipping, and wisecracks. It's probably everyone's favorite.

Autumn had Alda's gloomy, fat-ankled daughters and several extended bitchy fights in an inn where no one seemed to mind all the shouting. It's probably no one's favorite.

Winter has humor and pathos, and is also rather brief. It's the most balanced of the four seasons, but also probably not as memorable.

What is this obsession with fat ankles?

Fat ankles are like any other inborn physical trait: it's tacky to make fun of them. (Or "pointlessly bitchy," if you prefer.)

Threads like this are why I’ve never been able to turn my back on the DL.

But make one grammatical error and the DL will attack.

R271- The OH DEAR qween will certainly attack.

Bess Armstrong's character is also the only one who's never depicted with character flaws. The worst one can say about her is that she's naïve about Nick and blindly in love with her new man, but that happens to everyone at the start of a relationship.

Alda is pretentious and philosophical. Burnett is too reserved and uptight. Weston is a whiny and cheap hypochondriac. Moreno is crass and hurtful. Cariou is a garbage-dick. And Dennis is a basket case who was loopy even before the divorce.

But Armstrong's Ginny speaks up when the daughter is troubled, when the others are being too hard on Weston's character, and so forth. She's the only one not totally submerged in this group's bullshit.

"I can't BELIEVE he brought her."

The scene where Len Carious tries to get his glum daughter to smile is one of the cringiest.

I hated Carol's hair in this movie. It was as glum as that smile.

....

We found some real creative writers on this thread

It’s back on Netflix, bitches!

When Bess Armstrong gets a ring surprise in a clam shell, when I was a youngster I thought Carol Burnett and Rita Moreno's characters were mean mocking it. Now I get it and can relate.

This film would work back to back with Ordinary People with Mary Tyler Moore. Both had comedians trying to play real life middle aged uptight house Fraus. Both were depressing movies is you ask me.

Yes, R281, but Beth Jarrett is an icon, nobody even remembers the name of Burnett's character...

[Quote] Tina Fey has bought the rights to a remake.

which solidifies that TFS is a shitty film.

[Quote]This film would work back to back with Ordinary People with Mary Tyler Moore. Both had comedians trying to play real life middle aged uptight house Fraus. Both were depressing movies is you ask me.

Variety

"Tale is populated strictly with Ordinary People, but Alda’s script doesn’t begin to scratch the surface to discover what makes them tick and is particularly stingy in giving Carol Burnett and Rita Moreno anything to work with."

I remember my parents going to the movie. It seemed so grown-up.

I remember the TV series two with Alda’s charisma-challenged daughters. They were terrible and boring.

If it were three gay couples, would they be as annoyed and amused at having to listen to hours and hours of sex on the boat?

I liked it. I think of it as a Woody Allen movie without the witty dialogue and teen girl love interest.

r285 I remember my parents going to see this and The Goodbye Girl, my mom said little Quinn Cummings had a potty mouth.

R253- Sally Struthers BLEW UP as well. Even by the early 1980's when she was only still in her early 30's she had become quite large.

R279- Thanks. I just started watching on Netflix again. I made a mistake. Actually it's Carol Burnett driving that nice 1979 Chevrolet Impala Station Wagon at the beginning of the movie when they're picking everyone up to go to the country.

Weston was gay right? I thought he was mismatched with Moreno. He seemed like a SO GAY in this.

R291- He did seem like a FAT FUSSY QWEEN 👸

Jack was married to Marge Redmond!

[Quote] If it were three gay couples, would they be as annoyed and amused at having to listen to hours and hours of sex on the boat?

Possibly! annoyed due to jealousy or simply amused but after hearing it for hours I think I would be annoyed.

[quote]Wonder why Alda got the movie when Charles Grodin starred with Burstyn on Broadway, was Tony nominated and already had "The Heartbreak Kid" and "King Kong" on his resume?

Because Alda was the biggest male TV comedy star in America at the time. And Grodin's career was then in decline (and would be until it was temporarily revived with "The In-Laws" and then "Midnight Run").

Y’all know Tina Fey is remaking this as a Netflix series, right?

R293- Now that was a far odder pairing than Weston and Moreno in the Four Seasons. Marge Redmond seemed like a sista of Sapho to me and Weston was a big QWEEN.

R294- It was a TINY house boat. I get seasick easily and I'm claustrophobic so that whole scenario sounds like a nightmare to me.

These couples are affluent. You'd think they'd just take vacations on their own.

R296- Wasn't there a tv show called The Four Seasons on tv in the 80's?

I’d enjoy a book about beloved famous people who were and are secretly nightmares of ego and solipsism.

Spy magazine was so good at exposing this phenomenon. I recall an article about miserable bosses titled something like “You’ve done a great job. Now get out…”

Movieline, too, had some good and mean content about over-the-top egomaniacs, like Mike Myers at the peak of his fame screaming over the phone “do you know you’re talking to the next Woody Allen?!”

Alda was so handsome and fortunately born on third base, and had so much recognition for his work. I remember his PBS program Frontiers and his great stature as a science communicator in the 1990’s. Some of it was great and probably deserved, yet I remember hearing how awful and dismissive he was to deal with personally. I think there are periods of his career where he was the prototypical tall, handsome smirking jerk.

Yes, R299. Briefly in 1984.

r300, part of the problem was that by the end of M*A*S*H* he was such a ridiculous big deal not just for being the star of the biggest sitcom but also because hew as seen as this new type of masculine behavior. In the early 80s, he was seen as the quintessential sensitive man, which was very big back then.

When M*A*S*H* ended, The New Republic did a hilarious piece where they imagined that with his extraordinary popularity Alda would rise to one day become the president of the United States and would create a new cabinet position, the Secretary of Caring (to which he would appoint Carol Burnett).

It's interesting to see what happens with certain actors. Sandy Dennis rose to acclaim in the 1960s while Carol Burnett was doing TV. Later Sandy's career in film declined and Carol's rose, if not by much.

R302- Phil Donahue reminded of Alan Alda so much.

The only character I felt anything was Sandy Dennis’s.

Sandy Dennis might’ve been pretty when young, but her middle-aged turn in this movie makes her look like someone with Long COVID. She so nasally, with blotchy skin from 30 years of constant crying. And what’s with that bogus half-accent? Where is she supposed to be from?

Sandy Dennis was never pretty. Always odd looking.

R307 Len Cariou, too. He’s a talented actor, but he’s got teeth for five people.

Can you imagine spend 4 vacations a year with the same people?

Different times I guess. But trying to please 8 different people for 4 times each year for 20 years is insane to me.

^ Isn't that raised as a plot point?

R291 Little know fact: Jack Weston was the brother of Sam Weston, aka Anthony Spinelli, a prolific director of "golden age" porn movies.

Burt Reynolds' character in "Boogie Nights" was loosely based on Spinelli.

I must have watched this gem of a movie a dozen times on HBO when I was a kid. I was obsessed with certain movie on HBO back in the 1980s, like the Four Seasons, How to Beat the High Cost of Living, Making Love, 9 to 5.

.

[Quote] I must have watched this gem of a movie a dozen times on HBO when I was a kid. I was obsessed with certain movie on HBO back in the 1980s, like the Four Seasons, How to Beat the High Cost of Living, Making Love, 9 to 5.

and Making Love has more laughs than any of them

Another movie you never hear of any more that HBO used to play all the time when I was a kid was 'Romantic Comedy' starring Dudley Moore, Mary Steenburgen, and also has Frances Sternhagen.

(^.^) Moore and Steenburgen together sounds almost as dudley as Moore and Moore.

That movie is hilarious. When Alan Alda finally loses it and starts kicking the moose head into the fireplace, Jack Weston is shouting "I'm not paying for this!" and Rita Moreno says "I wonder what other people do on their vacations" how is that not funny?

It's funny like a bland sitcom which this movie apparently became for a brief run

for one season

[quote] Sandy Dennis might’ve been pretty when young, but her middle-aged turn in this movie makes her look like someone with Long COVID. She so nasally, with blotchy skin from 30 years of constant crying.

"Sandy Dennis has made an acting style out of post-nasal drip"

--Pauline Kael

Dennis is funny in 1970s The Out of Towners