Primary Colors (1998)

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."