Product: Get to Know Your Rabbit [VHS] (1972)
Rating: 5.0
BRIAN DE PALMA and magic
I was a kid magician, then a teen magician (utterly deadly in the late sixties--doug henning had not yet liberated magic nor had geekiness turned chic) and I was a total fan of the Smothers Brothers (it was the hippest show on television, and is still too politically subversive to be shown in it's entirety) and I was a huge fan of Orson Welles (who was also a kid magician, he once went by the stage name "The Great Delassandro" which is, quite intentionally, his name in this movie.I had this friend named Lisa, a little older than I. Lisa (who now goes by the name Iris) and I used to go to movies, listen to records, hang out and make sandwiches, that sort of thing. In those days you could see many classic movies in 'revival' and 'art' theaters, and at one of these we caught the only week ever you could see this film on a big screen.Stanley Beeman's life sucks. He is an anonymous faceless executive in an anonymous faceless job at a generic soul robbing company. His girlfriend leaves him, then comes back just to make him crazy (I was thirteen when I first saw this movie and didn't really understand that this was stark realism until some years later) and, mysteriously somebody comes to tune the piano they don't have.My favorite parts:Art Metrano describing brassieres. (if you don't fall off your chair laughing at this you have no joy )Welles teaching how to handle hecklersSmothers to the thrift store clerk: "I'm looking for something...seedy"and too many more to mention.This film lives life at the gut level. Mister De Palma, we LOVE your movies! Please get this one made available on DVD. I would even buy it on a foreign release!