40 POUNDS OF TROUBLE (1962) - when a Vegas swinger spends the day at Disneyland, he becomes an Anaheim softee

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about!”
-Elvis Presley responding to a pompous windbag pontificating about Dave Brubeck at a party in Jailhouse Rock

The King don’t want that shit. The King don’t need that shit. The King says “take that shit to the bowl”.
 
There was a time in the late fifties/early sixties when the stodgy white intelligentsia were perfectly represented by Dave Brubeck’s cutting edge yet white-friendly melodic jazz. Let me be clear; I’m not trying to come down to where Dave works and knock the dick out of his mouth. He’s simply an innocent bystander within this whole dynamic. Pompous windbags need to glom onto something, and Brubeck came with the right sounds at the right time. After all, atypical rhythms and complex chords are “mathy”, and math equals smart.

Jean-Luc Godard’s A Married Woman also subtly incorporates the sounds of Dave Brubeck. While a French housewife does the dishes, she listens to a flutey French cover of Brubeck’s “Three to Get Ready”, not as intellectual stimulation, but as elevator muzak for the bourgeoisie. Clearly, Godard sees through the faux-intellectualism that Brubeck came to represent, just like Elvis did, but Jean-Luc is much more of a wily smartass about it. After all, Elvis don’t do no satire. He just tells people to shut the fuck up.

Anyways, Tony Curtis is one of those swinging early sixties bachelors. He has a perfectly swinging job (a manager of a casino), a perfectly swinging love interest (Suzanne Plechette), and a perfectly swinging outlook on marriage (fuck that noise). Unfortunately, his life becomes complicated when becomes the de facto parent 5-year-old girl named Penny (the titular poundage of trouble). Not willingly mind you; rather, a gambler is unable to pay his debts and leaves his 5-year-old daughter as collateral. In my mind, leaving your daughter in the hands of a stranger to cover a gambling debt is just a notch above selling her for meat and beer. Either way, I’ll come out and say it…bad parenting there, buddy.

Of course, Penny is a bit of a pain in the ass, especially the way she forces responsibility upon his hepcat shoulders. She also spouts off her smartass one-liners that people seem to enjoy hearing come out of a kid’s mouth. Entire television shows are built on this premise for some ungodly reason. However, the shit almost hits the fan when she rudely destroys a tape of a live jam session with Dave Brubeck. Tony was throwing a swinging party with a host of friends and an impromptu Brubeck concert broke out (very “Playboy After Dark”-esque if I may say so), and Tony was lucky enough to catch it on tape. No doubt this proof that this amazing party took place would’ve helped him get laid, but little Penny decided that unspooling tape was a fun way to spend an afternoon. Pre-Elvis, this was a horrific crime against cool.

However, before Tony can build up enough rage to chuck the kid out of a Casino hotel window, sending her wisecracking noggin crashing onto a strip club marquee below, he finds out that Penny’s father has committed suicide. Given the circumstances, Tony actually musters up some sympathy for the child. You know, a five-year-old girl alone in the world, with no home and no one to love her and take care of her. It should come as little surprise that around the same time, Suzanna mentions to Tony that she’s looking to get married. Maybe getting blown by a model while sipping a martini is not the most important thing in the world. Certainly top five, but not number one.

Well, I think you know where this is headed, assuming you’ve ever watched a rote romantic comedy before. But, before it gets there, the trio ends up taking a trip. Penny keeps mentioning that she wants to go to Disneyland, and since Tony doesn’t have the heart to tell the kid that her father is dead, he grants her this wish. I guess Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride is supposed to make up for the fact that she no longer has any parents (the ride is fucking awesome, but not THAT awesome). I guess it’s sort of a “Make-a-Wish” deal, where a child’s life is in the shitter (dying from lieukemia, or maybe suffering from terminal gout) and they get whatever they want as a result. Just be glad that Tony made a child’s dreams come true.

This leads to a VERY extended Disneyland chase sequence (the child authorities want to take Penny away to a home) that showcases the entire park. Not even Disney movies had the balls to throw in such obvious product placement. In the process, it manages to provide the best travelogue of Disneyland ever filmed, especially with the POV shots of the rides. I find the whole Disneyland sequence pretty nostalgic, as it looks awfully similar to how I remember it (I last went there in the early nineties). I’m sure it’s since been ruined by corporatism and modern flash. Nowadays, they probably have some ride called the “Hannah Montana XXXtreme Rocket Ship Rollercoaster Presented by Red Bull”. In fact, I once ran around Disneyland from ride to ride, much like Tony Curtis does here, in my successful quest to go on every single ride/attraction within a one day, 14 hour span. Not to brag, but it was probably my Mount Everest.

So yeah, you hear rumors about Walt Disney being a fascist and a Nazi sympathiser, and you can view Disney (and Disneyland by proxy) as the ultimate distraction, the soma of choice for a brave new world. But, then again, maybe you’re fucked no matter what, so you might as well have some distractions to enjoy while you’re getting bent over by life. However, as Tony finds out, the best thing to salve the wounds that result from an unfair world is unconditional love (that was the thing I was referring to earlier when I said there are things more important than blowjobs). I think it was a great prophet that said “life is a nonsensical game filled with assholes, and it helps to have a teammate to pass the ball to” (maybe that was Al Michaels that said that). Also, a seventy-year-old man who still fancies himself a swinging Vegas bachelor frankly comes across as a big time asshole. Only Frank Sinatra and Hugh Hefner were ever able to pull that sort of thing off. Well...sort of.

DIARY OF A BACHELOR (1964) - the lesson is, unless you're Anne Frank (and you're not), don't ever keep a diary

Near the end of Diary of a Bachelor, a character asks a very legitimate question - “what is the difference between a bachelor and a single man?”. I guess the simple answer would be that the single man wants to get married and can’t find the right woman (or any woman), and the bachelor has to be tricked into marriage, like a gorilla led into a cage by a trail of bananas. While the single man seeks to no longer be alone, a studmuffin bachelor resides in a sort of relationship purgatory, lonely deep down but never alone, what with a bevy of tasty ladies visiting him at the zoo (so to speak). Here is a portrait of a true studmuffin who is repeatedly smacked by banana wielding women that parade through his zoo, until he is ground to a muffinstump and no longer able to so much as crawl into a marriage cage. If my use of metaphor is confusing, may I suggest licking a toad. Not only will your mind expand itself, but you’ll make a toad feel pretty damn good.

So, a hot 60’s wife is all ready to settle down with Charlie, but happens upon his secret diary one day. She starts reading and the flashbacks start coming. What follows is a series of sexual escapades (in the tamest sense) of Charlie the bachelor, all told through his words. As he puts it, “I’d like to know which witch is gonna steal my freedom”. In other words, maybe he was just sampling across the spectrum, sort of window shopping for a ball and chain. Then again, if you’re practically equating marriage to prison time, why bother? I guess it was the “thing to do” circa 1964, a mentality left over from the fifties, just as the film feels like an extension of the fifties, rather than a document of the mid sixties. Either way, women don’t like to be called witches, no matter the context. Even Wiccan chicks hate being called witches.

Charlie’s screwbally juggling of early 60’s beauties is very appealing at first (and a truly awe inspiring time capsule), what with the crisp black and white photography, the clothes, the ladies, the swanky apartments, the liquor, etc. Charlie is living the life it would seem, but it’s also a bit of a pain in the ass, what with the running around and the many phone calls and the bevy of excuses. The most common one is the old warhorse “I’ve got a late night business meeting” and, at least by this point, that should be a giant red flag for married women the world over. However, the tables slowly turn when the women start playing Charlie for a fool, instead of the other way around. One girl even turns out to be a prostitute. I guess this was during a quainter era when hookers would politely ask for payment after the “deed” was over. I don’t know about you, but whenever I pick up a hooker, they demand money up front, threatening me at knifepoint if need be.

Anyway, this culminates in an encounter with a perky avant garde artist. Charlie, again, thinks he has charmed his way into a night of romance, but things quickly turn alarming upon entering her apartment. Not only is there a monkey doll lynched from the ceiling, she has her cat chained to the toilet (a real cat). Some perverts might find this a wee bit erotic (myself, for example), but most would conclude that the lady in question is a bit of a nut. Either way, an angry boyfriend starts stampeding up to the apartment, and Charlie prepares his escape, but not before asking the girl “why didn’t you tell me you have a boyfriend?”. She responds with “well, it’s none of your business!”.

I am reminded of an earlier scene where Charlie is attending a “business meeting”, sitting around playing poker with the boys (one of which is Dom DeLuise in his first film role, a welcome comedic sight believe you me). Included in the group are several married guys who sit around and complain about their wives, how all women are nags, etc. One guys asks another (paraphrasing) “what do you think your wife is up to while you’re playing poker?”. He assumes she’s at home raising the kids (god knows somebody has to), but, upon reflection, he’s not too sure. One problem with objectifying women, apart from the whole “they are human beings” deal, is that they can just as well objectify you back. Or, to put it another way, it’s hard to play an accordion that won’t sit still and behave. That’s another one of those metaphor deals. I know it’s a bit unfair to ask the reader to do the heavy lifting, but those toads aren’t going to lick themselves.

P.S. The film was written by Freddie Francis, of all people, one the greatest cinematographers who ever lived, and a good genre director in his own right. This was his only filmed screenplay, but it’s a solid comedic script, with some damn funny lines. It does suffer a little bit from its structure, in that it’s hard to maintain screwball momentum with an episodic script. Anyway, I just thought you might like to take in some useless trivia.