Mixing Politics and 365Watch #2

Back to the Baconian Mixing Politics and 365Watch

From Natalie Wood to the 1918/19 German Revolution in 4 moves:

Late last month I squirmed through the execrable 'Sex and the Single Girl'. My only defence -and it's a flimsy one - is that it starred the divine Natalie Wood.

Adapted from the 1962 book of the same name, the film's screenplay was co-written by Joseph Heller who - and I'm guessing wildly here - got the writing gig as he was still at that point considered the literary hot stuff off the back of his 1961 novel, Catch-22.

Literary sensation, Catch-22, received its very own film adaption treatment in 1970. I've only ever seen bits and pieces of the film here and there but it's got a stellar cast and I love the book, so it'll probably find its way onto 365Watch at some point. Despite all the right credentials, the film was neither a success with the public nor with the critics. (M*A*S*H stole its thunder that year.) All the more surprising because director Mike Nichols and screenwriter Buck Henry were coming off the back of the success of The Graduate.

Mike Nichols was born Michael Igorevitch Peschkowsky in Berlin in 1931. His maternal grandfather was Gustav Landauer, communist anarchist theoretician and a leading participant in the Bavarian Soviet Republic of the Spring of 1919.

As mentioned previously, "Sorry, it doesn't get any better."

Mixing Politics and 365Watch #1

I've not been mixing it much lately, so, as the blog is currently in film watching mode, I've decided to kick-start a series entitled, 'Mixing Politics and 365Watch'.

I can't guarantee that it will have the longevity of 'Mixing Footie and Politics' or the studied obscurantism of 'Mixing Pop and Politics', but I do promise irrelevance and responses of 'What the fuck is he on?'*

Inspired by the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon trivia game, the idea is that I will take a film that I watched as part of 365Watch and somehow link it to fringe left-wing politics. The more tangential the connection the better. The more obscure the politics? All the more in keeping with the blog.

Of course, such a series should start with the usual suspects. From Dustin Hoffman to the SPGB in 3 moves.

Last night I watched the 1969 movie, John and Mary, starring a buttoned-up Dustin Hoffman and an eyebrow-less Mia Farrow.

Adapted by John Mortimer, the script is based on Mervyn Jones's 1966 novel of the same name.

Mervyn Jones? Only the same Mervyn Jones who reviewed Barltrop's The Monument: the Story of the Socialist Party of Great Britain in the pages of New Statesman in 1975. (The review wasn't as hostile as you would have thought. It wasn't that glowing, either.)

Sorry, it doesn't get any better.

*'What the fuck is he on?' Lack of bastard sleep.