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- A Splurch in the Kisser
A detailed and hilarious look at the art and life of a legendary Hollywood filmmaker
With one of the longest and most controversial careers in Hollywood history, Blake Edwards is a phoenix of movie directors, full of hubris, ambition, and raving comic chutzpah. His rambunctious filmography remains an artistic force on par with Hollywood's greatest comic directors: Lubitsch, Sturges, Wilder. Like Wilder, Edwards's propensity for hilarity is double-helixed with pain, and in films like Breakfast at Tiffany's, Days of Wine and Roses, and even The Pink Panther, we can hear him off-screen, laughing in the dark. And yet, despite those enormous successes, he was at one time considered a Hollywood villain. After his marriage to Julie Andrews, Edwards's Darling Lili nearly sunk the both of them and brought Paramount Studios to its knees. Almost overnight, Blake became an industry pariah, which ironically fortified his sense of satire, as he simultaneously fought the Hollywood tide and rode it. Employing keen visual analysis, meticulous research, and troves of interviews and production files, Sam Wasson delivers the first complete account of one of the maddest figures Hollywood has ever known.
Acknowledgments
Matters of Introduction
Prologue: Breaking In, 1922-1955
BLAKE BEGINS, 1955-1959
Bring Your Smile Along (1955)
He Laughed Last (1956)
Mister Cory (1957)
This Happy Feeling (1958), The Perfect Furlough (1959)
BLAKE BUILDS, 1959-1962
Operation Petticoat (1959)
High Time (1960)
Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)
Experiment in Terror (1962)
Days of Wine and Roses (1962)
BLAKE BLOSSOMS, 1963-1968
The Pink Panther (1964)
A Shot in the Dark (1964)
The Great Race (1965)
What Did You Do in the War, Daddy? (1966)
Gunn (1967)
The Party (1968)
BLAKE BURNS, 1968-1974
Darling Lili (1970)
Wild Rovers (1971), The Carey Treatment (1972)
The Tamarind Seed (1974)
PANTHER PICTURES (BLAKE BANKS)
Sellers Lives: Return of the Pink Panther (1975)
The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976)
Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978)
Sellers Lives On: Trail of the Pink Panther (1982)
Curse of the Pink Panther (1983)
Son of the Pink Panther (1993)
BLAKE BOOMS, 1979-1982
"10" (1979)
S.O.B. (1981)
Victor/Victoria (1982)
BLAKE BREAKS, 1983-1988
The Man Who Loved Women (1983)
Micki + Maude (1984)
A Fine Mess (1986)
That's Life! (1986)
Blind Date (1987)
Sunset (1988)
BLAKE BOWS, 1989-1991
Skin Deep (1989)
Switch (1991)
Epilogue: Making Out, October 24, 1993
Appendix: Filmography
Appendicitis: How to Make a Blake Edwards Movie
Notes
Recommended Reading
Index
SAM WASSON is currently working on a book about Breakfast at Tiffany's. He lives in Los Angeles.
"With this title, Wasson fulfills the goal of the 'Wesleyan Film' series, which aims to produce books that are 'rigorous, critical, and accessible both to academics and to lay readers with a serious interest in film.' The study is a pleasure to read, primarily because the author is a fan and intimate with the details of the thematic content and style of Edwards's films. ... Recommended (for) lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers."
~S. Vander Closter, Choice
"Sam Wasson has undertaken nothing less than the critical resurrection of Blake Edwards, whose 40-film career, by turns good, great, bad, but never indifferent, has been ridiculously underrated by the critical establishment. Wasson very readably displays the scholarly background, writing skills, historical sophistication and balanced judgment to succeed in his objective. One hopes this impressive work will inspire a splurge of revivals and retrospectives of this more than intermittently hilarious filmmaker."
~Andrew Sarris, film critic, The New York Observer
"Reading Wasson's book is like having a couple of beers with your friend, the Blake freak. I was continually amazed at the exacting nature of the descriptions of shots and sequences and the intelligence of the analysis that grows out of them."
~Ed Sikov, author of Mr. Strangelove: A Biography of Peter Sellers
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