How Blake Edwards Made Me The Geek I Am
I owe Blake Edwards quite a bit. The legendary director passed away this week and it caught me a bit by surprise. I love Blake Edwards films. His work with Peter Sellers in the Party and the Pink Panther films proves how much you can accomplish in a true collaboration. From Breakfast at Tiffany’s to “10”, there isn’t a single Blake Edwards film that I can honestly say I don’t enjoy to one degree or another.
Edwards started as a writer in radio. He caught a lucky break when Orson Welles brought him on to help write “The War of the Worlds” in 1938. He’s credited with coming up with the classic line, “They’re here, and they’re hungry.” His gifts to sci-fi and geekdom in that regard alone are plentiful. I’m looking at you Critters.
Edwards was able to infuse all of his movies with a sense of “what can I get away with.” He was never pushing the envelope, so to speak. He was just generally trying to see what absurdity or off handed offense he could slip in without anyone noticing. His triumph in that regard is S.O.B. a loosely auto-biographical satire about Edwards contentious relationship with Paramount during the making of Darling Lili. Edwards throws so many Hollywood in-jokes and personal asides at you that the movie is almost too much. It’s also the movie where he convinces his wife, Julie Andrews of Sound of Music fame, to go topless in grand fashion. The musical number where she bares it all is surreal (intentionally so.)
His movies in the ‘80s were great depictions of men (okay Dudley Moore) trying to make a commitment. The imagery of Bo Derek in “10” is still there in people’s minds all these years later. I don’t know any male who hasn’t fantasized about Bo Derek wearing corn rows. If you haven’t, then you just haven’t seen “10.”
Now, as to why I owe a huge debt to Blake Edwards. It’s not for all the fun sexy imagery he filled the screen with, thought it’s appreciated. And as much as I love the films, I can’t say the Pink Panther is the reason I love comedy. Blake Edwards is in a tiny way, responsible for me being able to think for myself and realize I needed to form my own opinion about movies (and other topics as well).
In 1991 Edwards made Switch, a film where a womanizing playboy dies and comes back to life as a hot woman. (Ellen Barkin) I was watching it with my parents when I was around 12, it had already been out for a couple of years. In the film the formerly male Ellen Barkin attempts to find her way in her new life, tries lesbianism and fails, and ends up falling in love with a man. My parents freaked out. The “Switch” in the film, to my parents, had essentially made Ellen Barkin’s character gay. They then turned off the movie and told me it was garbage.
At the time, some of the concepts in Switch were over my head, I was only 12. But I remember not thinking it was garbage. I thought Ellen Barkin was really funny pretending to be a man trapped in a woman’s body. I remember laughing. Switch is not Edwards best film, but it is the one time I remember thinking, “What’s the big fucking deal?”
From that point on I learned not to trust my parents taste in movies, they saw garbage when I saw entertainment; they saw immorality when I saw someone finding love. Switch became the lynch pin in my fight against censorship in my house hold. “But WHY can’t I watch it?” “Why is it garbage?” “It seemed okay to me.”
This fight led to me question other weird bannings in my household. My parents had banned both Married with Children and the Simpsons as they viewed them as a “bad influence.” Interestingly enough, we all look back on those shows now with nostalgia and consider them decent family shows, but at the time they constantly caused an uproar, especially Bart Simpson as a bad influence on kids.
I essentially picked all of my own rentals from then on and started watching movies I knew my parents would object to alone on Sunday mornings when I would convince my mom to let me skip church. I’m pretty sure they all thought I was trying to get out of it to masterbate anyway. I was only 13 by the time I earnestly started getting into movies. My oldest sister had gotten her license, so I made her take me to the movies every chance we got. This is also how a life long friendship formed between me and my sister Shelley, we bonded over movies that our parents would have never let us watch had we told them what we were going to see.
Looking back, Switch is one of the first movies to make me wonder what else was out there. “You mean I can watch more than Disney and Ninja Turtles.” Blake Edwards made some incredible films, but it was his mediocre one that helped put me on my path to acquiring decent taste. If not for Switch, who knows what brilliance I would consider garbage and what travesty would be gold. I would never call Blake Edwards a personal hero or idol. And I’m definitely not putting his film Switch above my parents. But Blake Edwards made a film that steered me toward an open mind, and the least I can do is thank him for it.
