His being in town for a visit meant I was busy for a few days, and I couldn't even say how long it was until I remembered to search out that odd movie I'd never heard of. I thought I remembered Teri Garr being in the trailer, but began to doubt it when I looked into her filmography. And how old was it? The sets I remembered in the trailer were very stylized and interesting lighting techniques were used to transition from one to the next. Was it a musical? No clue.
I eventually gave up, figuring I'd happen upon it eventually and recognize it. Well, hoping I would. Fast forward to two days ago, when a friend who's been tweeting about a lot of older stuff I wouldn't generally go for mentioned something he was about to watch from 1982. I was curious, so I looked up the trailer.
Eureka! It was Teri Garr! I finally got to watch it!
And it was terrible.
Ok, not completely terrible. The story is terrible and the characters are terrible, but I really enjoyed watching it. Maybe I'm easily entertained, but I can forgive bad storytelling if it's fun to look at, and this film's a stunner. It takes place entirely on sets, and it's obvious they're sets because you can see the line in the sky where the wall meets the ceiling, but everything looks so cool. It takes place in Las Vegas, and they spared no expense recreating the strip. No really, the movie had a budget of $26 million ($64 million in today's dollars) and it's obvious they felt free to spend every last bit of it.
It was a huge flop, and it deserved to be. But I loved to look at it.
Oh yeah, it was directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Ha.
