You're a Big Boy Now

Plot synopsis:
Bernard Chanticleer (Peter Kastner), called "Big Boy" by his parents, is 19 but still lives with his overbearing, clinging mother (Geraldine Page) and his commanding, disapproving father (Rip Torn), who is Curator of Incunabula at the New York Public Library. Bernard also works as a low-level assistant at the library, where his father is constantly monitoring and admonishing him. His father decides it's time he grew up and moved out of the family home in Great Neck and into his own Manhattan apartment. His mother is not happy about letting him go, but acquiesces to her husband and arranges for Bernard to live in a rooming house run by nosy, prudish Miss Nora Thing (Julie Harris). Miss Thing inherited the building on the condition that her late brother's aggressive pet rooster be allowed to occupy the fifth floor, which Bernard must pass to get to his room. Miss Thing reassures Bernard's mother that the rooster only attacks girls, especially young pretty girls, to which Bernard's mother responds that her son isn't interested in girls yet, but arranges that Miss Thing will spy on Bernard and report any "female" activity. Bernard's mother also constantly mails locks of her hair to Bernard at his new residence.
Actually, Bernard is very interested in girls, but due to his upbringing he's a naive, immature virgin. He is smitten from afar with the coldly beautiful actress Barbara Darling (Elizabeth Hartman). Meanwhile, Amy Partlett (Karen Black), Bernard's grade school classmate who now works in his father's office, confesses to Bernard that she has a crush on him. Bernard's worldly co-worker Raef Del Grado (Tony Bill) encourages him to date Amy because she's a "sure thing"— a girl that will sleep with him — but discourages him from trying to pursue Barbara. Amy and Bernard go on a date to a discotheque, but when Bernard sees Barbara performing as the featured go-go dancer, he is mesmerized by Barbara and loses all interest in Amy. Amy tries to win him back by kissing him and offering to spend the night with him, which Bernard accepts although he's thinking of Barbara the entire time. When they try to go to Bernard's room, the rooster attacks Amy, causing a commotion in which Miss Thing falls down the stairs and breaks her arm. Bernard's mother blames Amy, calling her a tramp and forbidding Bernard from seeing her again.
Bernard writes Barbara a gushing fan letter, to which she responds inviting him to visit her at the theater where she's appearing in a play. Barbara is a narcissist, who hates men after being sexually assaulted as a young girl by an albino one-legged hypnotherapist. Not knowing all this, Bernard is thrilled to hear from her, rushes to the theater to meet her, and bumbles his way through an evening at her apartment. Barbara, enjoying her control over Bernard's emotions, teases him and later tries to seduce him, but he can't perform and is upset about it though Barbara seems to be understanding and even invites him to move in with her. Meanwhile, Amy has been calling Bernard's rooming house all night looking for him.
Miss Thing goes to the library to tell Bernard's father that Bernard was out all night and a girl called him every 15 minutes. Miss Thing and Bernard's father accidentally get trapped in a timelocked vault full of rare erotica, which horrifies her and causes her to rush out in disarray when the vault opens, giving the impression that Bernard's father made a pass at her. Bernard's father has also made a pass at Amy, who gets upset and tells Bernard. Miss Thing evicts Bernard, so he moves in with Barbara, although he still can't perform with her and she's starting to treat him badly. His parents have wrongly concluded he's spending nights with Amy, but when they discover Amy hasn't seen him, his father sends Raef to find him, leading to Raef and Barbara becoming engaged and Barbara throwing Bernard out of her apartment.
Bernard, followed by Raef and Barbara, returns to the library where his parents and Amy are waiting for him. Miss Thing and her new boyfriend, police officer Francis Graf (Dolph Sweet), who also lives in her boarding house, also arrive to confront Bernard's father about what happened in the vault. Bernard finally rebels against his parents, telling them he's leaving and wants to get away from them, and then grabbing and running away with his father's most prized library item, the Gutenberg Bible. A slapstick chase through a street parade and a department store follows, ending when Barbara knocks Bernard out with a mannequin's leg. Barbara is featured in the newspaper for stopping a rare book thief and saving the Gutenberg Bible for the City of New York. Elated with her newfound fame, Barbara dumps Raef. Bernard is jailed, but Amy bails him out and he realizes she's the girl for him, and they go off happily together.

Tags: cult, romantic

Review:
Coppola had been working for a year with MGM writing scripts for them (he had got this job as a result of winning a nationwide literary competition) and had scripted Is Paris Burning?
He had also written the screenplay of This Property Is Condemned, based on a Tennessee Williams short story, and (apart from the magnificent helicopter shot which starts the film) thought very little of it.For full details of the filming of this first real Coppola movie see my memoirs Dropping Names which is available from my website www.davidbenedictus.com Oh and by the way clips of Dementia 13 which Coppola filmed in a couple of weeks in Ireland (he mentioned to me some nudie films which he may or may not have directed but Dementia 13 is probably his first acknowledged work) are used several times throughout You're A Big Boy Now (I imagine he didn't have to pay copyright on them!) and they look powerful to me.A sad memory is that Elizabeth Hartman who plays the sexy man-hater with great precision and style was to have a serious nervous breakdown after the end of her marriage and threw herself out of a window to her death.
What we have here is an early F.F.C. effort (he also wrote most of the screenplay).You can see the genius that is later to come.Here's a confused, virginal young man, constantly picked on by his over-bearing parents, trying to find his way in the world of New York City.
Speaking of names, the part played by Lisa Hartman is Barbara Darling, a would-be actress who dances in a go-go club at night.Watching Bernard weave his way through conniving co-workers and the strange behavior of Miz Darling, is worth the price of admission.I always wonder who writes these critiques for IMDB, and should I trust them?
You'll find yourself running into similar things that happened to you in your youthful pursuits.You could do a lot worse taking a chance on a movie..
About 15 minutes into this quirky film I was ready to proclaim it a must see and to bill it as the best movie no one has seen or even heard about.
After all it was Coppola's masters thesis for film school.
It has Elizabeth Hartman successfully playing against type as a sexy (somewhat psycho) Greenwich Village ingénue.
It has Peter Kastner, Rip Torn, Geraldine Page and Julie Harris playing characters more bizarre than anything in "Harold and Maude" (it reminds you a lot of that film and may have inspired it).
It even has Coppola cutting in extensive gruesome footage from his first film "Dementia 13".Unfortunately by the halfway point of "You're a Big Boy Now" it totally runs out of steam and you begin to understand that its obscurity is well-deserved.
Coppola's script is the problem because the cast are generally excellent and you can tell they had a lot of fun making the film.
Even minor cast members like Dolph Sweet do a good job and there are great little sequences like Kastner's after dark explorations of the New York City streets.
But unlike "Herald and Maude", Coppola says nothing with this film; consequently it ends up as a classic case of the whole being considerably less than the sum of its parts.I am not in love with Coppola as a director, but even those who are will acknowledge the incredible distance between his good stuff and the vast majority of his films.
This is not his good stuff but is worth checking out if you like Hartman, Harris, and Page..
I saw it back then when I was a preteen and the extremely talented and tragic actress Elizabeth Hartman (who looks totally different, in this, than she did in Patch of Blue) plus the song "Darling Be Home Soon" ( a beautiful, and haunting song) by the Lovin Spoonful made it unforgettable!
I agree with a previous poster that it was great that Elizabeth Hartman was given a chance to play a part other than plain looking women and this was definitely the total opposite of some other roles she had..
Touching, funny, terrific Broadway cast and very well done especially considering the minuscule budget Coppola had to work with.
I can imagine Mayor Lindsay's involvement, allowing Coppola to interrupt the Times Square "crawl" and to shoot in the NYC 42nd St. Library.
He said he wanted to make a movie about the two best things in life; young love and hot pretzels!.
Anybody who loves movies of the 60's, and has missed this, has a monstrous gap in their viewing pleasure.
The cast consists of so many interesting actors/actresses: the tragic Elizabeth Hartman, the well-named Rip Torn, Tony Bill, Karen Black, Julie Harris.
One of the few times when the late Elizabeth Hartman gets to play as somebody other than a frail, mousy girl.
This time, she plays a bitchy, egotistical, man-hating actress/go-go dancer, who wins the heart of a young library clerk, played by Peter Kastner.
The kind of character, who could probably be the inspiration for a riot grrrl band.Besides that, I'm a Native New Yorker, so I've got a natural attraction for movies filmed in New York City, and the rest of the tri-state area.
A coming of age film centering on a young man's longings and fantasies for his dream girl whom he sees in the New York Public Library's main branch.
The lead, Peter Kastner, is forgettable, but his father played by Rip Torn, head of incunabula (see the movie and find out what it is!) at the library, is hilarious; the fight scene with Julie Harris is marvelous.
On the negative side is the lovely Elizabeth Hartman coming off her big success in "A Patch of Blue" with Sidney Poitier.
She is supposed to be the cool and detached object of longing - but is as vapid and empty as any character could be, and in part this has to be the fault of the direction of Coppola.
I watched it later that day and it changed my mood to great, and it became my favorite movie.Some of the sequences and lines and maddeningly dizzy and dizzyingly mad.
I've seen it about 50 times always trying to figure out the theme, and I still haven't come up with one, although, Bernard goes from a milk-spilling virgin to a maturing lad who finally opens his eyes to life and stops spilling milk.That $2 VHS copy is gone.
I wish I could find another copy, or, one on DVD.It's the most dizzy, maddeningly wonderful sexy piece or cinema I've seen, or ever will experience.So is there a way to find love with a woman like Amy Partlett with streaks of Barbara Darling that run through her veins?
As I watched it, I marveled on just how "ahead of its time" it actually was, and how many great films have stolen so many of its artistic riffs, so many of them redolent of the Swinging Sixties and all of the wild, drug-fueled looniness that characterized that brief period of time.
To see the great character actors who have gone on to spectacular careers in the many years since was especially thrilling to see, including Geraldine Page, Rip Torn, Tony Bill, Julie Harris (would there ever have been a "Thing" in The Men in Black without a "Miss Thing," curiously starring a much older Rip Torn?) and the always solid Karen Black in her first screen role.
It's absolutely amazing how many of Coppola's early films have launched such stellar careers.
But perhaps this wonderful film owes so much of its depth to the co-starring role portrayed by the luminous Elizabeth Hartman, who's twisted and soulful performance remains one for the ages.
This movie wonder is a perfectly hilarious, perfecting engaging, perfect little film.
Movies,films,even TV was changing and in some ways we're still trying to figure out what happened.
"Big Boy" was the coming of age movie that never got its due while hundreds of thousands of Babyboomers were indeed coming of age..
It enchanted me so much, I traveled back there every night for the rest of the week, just to see it again and again.Despite being very much a "New York Movie", it's themes are universal and as a young lad of 13, I REALLY identified with the 19-year-old hero (Americans are less mature than we Europeans).At that time, I only knew F.F.C. as the director of "Finian's Rainbow" (a VERY different project) and of course, he had yet to do "American Graffiti" (ANOTHER of my Top Ten).I have this masterpiece on VHS and the soundtrack album (in mono) on vinyl and they STILL stand up today.
I think people who dislike this movie are expecting another broad relationship comedy - but the comedy is very SUBTLE, obviously being lost on those who see it as just another "Young Man's Awakening" movie.But that aside, this is a charming, VERY Sixties look at teen-angst from the viewpoint of a central character who has JUST LEFT the bonds of home (so many feature ones who are still STUCK there).
Early Coppola film.
You probably never heard of this film--there's a good reason why.19 year old Barnard (Peter Kastner) is on his own in NYC and obsessed with girls.
He's extremely attracted by a beautiful, but cruel, actress named Barbara Darling (Elizabeth Hartman) while sweet, nice Amy Bartlett (Karen Black--supposedly her film debut)likes him.
Then there's his domineering parents (Rip Torn, Geraldine Page) and his holier than thou landlady named Miss Thing (Julie Harris!).As you can tell this is not an ordinary coming of age tale.
Great acting by everybody, but this film is very much a product of its time.
Looks nothing like a Coppola film.I didn't really like it.
With the exception of Amy, all the characters were annoying, the comedy was very cruel at times and the flashy camera-work really wore me down.
Peter Kastner passed away at the age of 64, of a heart attack in Toronto, Ontario, where he had been living for a few years with second wife Jenny.
This is pretty much a lousy unfunny movie, but it's got Karen Allen and Rip Torn and Geraldine Page and is directed by Francis Coppola.
However, much of it was filmed outdoors in New York City in 1966, and for those of us who live here, the difference between then and now is stark, and makes the flick worth watching.
The park was on a downward cycle at that time, later to be saved by the Central Park Conservancy.It's wild and raucous and dopey, but it shows a great deal of creativity with settings and a camera that moves with or against the actors.
Despite being directed by Francis Ford Coppola, "You're a Big Boy Now" has pretty much been forgotten in the fifty years that have passed since it first played in theaters.
Also, Coppola directs the movie with great energy throughout, from bizarre camera angles to offbeat performances.But while the movie is directed with gusto, it doesn't manage to mask a big problem with the movie.
Things do start moving after the halfway point or so, but it's kind of hard to get involved with what's happening because none of the characters are really all that sympathetic.
In the end, the movie can only be recommended to people with real special interest in Hollywood filmmaking from this period, and even they might find it tough going at times..
all this time I had never known the origin of those Lovin' Spoonful songs.
The most famous movie to look at the younger generation's disillusionment with the American way of life is "The Graduate", but Francis Ford Coppola's "You're a Big Boy Now" also offers some insight.
But this young man actively seeks out a new life, and he befriends a go-go dancer...but that's not all.A lot of the humor is cutaway humor.
In the end the movie isn't a masterpiece but has some funny stuff.
The Lovin' Spoonful did the music, and it includes some songs - among them "Amy's Theme" - that I had heard but never knew whence they came.I recommend the movie.
These, however, do lend the film a free-spirited sense of freedom that young Bernard (Kastner) is confused by, having been kept on a tight parental leash.
hard to rate: pretty good for a film school thesis?
how about an 11; cinema to study as a precursor to several great films?
maybe a 5 or 6; as a movie, just a movie, maybe 3; two big problems: story is loose, too often sophomoric, too much filler dialog of no help, never defines the main character, sometimes nerd, sometimes rube, adventurous and off to a new life, a wimp who reports to daddy; worse problem, the actor who plays him, kastner: no screen presence, often unpleasant, beady expression in closeups where he's supposed to be interested, thinking; in drawn out tours of Manhattan, watching him watch NYC, no reason to care; when the locations overwhelm the star of the movie you sense more trouble to come; it does; but, amazingly to me, he was nominate for bafta 'Most Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Roles' in '68, then went on to do mainly minor parts in minor TV series; somehow, film student Coppola got appearances from Geraldine Paige and Julie Harris, both at home with the camera, and a john Sebastian soundtrack; newcomer in small role that leaps out is Karen black, a natural; so settle on a 5- for the history of cinema, and glimpses like break to sepia and stills in a flashback become some of the great scenes in godfather 2.
Talented Peter Kastner plays a nebulous young man who's moved away from home and now lives on his own in NYC.
Vivid support is offered by Geraldine Page and Rip Torn are his parents, Julie Harris as his crazy landlady as well as a young Karen Black and Tony Bill.
A scene from Coppola's B/W 1963 film Dementia 13 plays in the background at the multi-media club in the film.
Too undisciplined for it's own good, You're a Big Boy Now is engaging and diverting and provides a look at New York City in the 60s.
This movie was very boring and made really no kind of sense to me at all.
It's about this ugly, gap-toothed, 19 year old guy who doesn't know much about girls and when he moves out on his own, he decides to see what girls are like.
Elizabeth Hartman plays an actress who's also a go-go dancer in whom the ugly guy gets a crush on after watching her dance at a club one day.
Thank God Elizabeth Hartman is my favorite actress.
Otherwise I would've stopped watching this movie about 20 mins after it started.
At its most beneficial now as a fun time watching Francis Ford Coppola be a kid his first time in the sandbox on the ground floor of New Hollywood, this adolescent wet dream---in that it's a great time but not terribly memorable---is a young example of the modern story of a young man's anxious initiation into the big world as well as of the imminent counterculture awareness, not owing to a concentration on drugs or long hair but the insertion of the up-and-coming music, the hottest dance fads, and crisp social attitudes.
But first of all, this light, quirky sophomore directorial effort---following his requisite Roger Corman warm-up debut---was the pioneer of the bunch.In late 1966, Coppola was a wunderkind green out of UCLA, and at the same time his second film is of the most base, commercial genre, it reflects Coppola's more scholarly influences, incorporating self-reflexive formal strategies originally conceived of in the European New Waves, and thus, well received by critics and the public alike.
Their favorite genres were of the raw, gritty grind house era that was to take advantage of the breaking of ground and opening of doors Coppola and his peers were revving up to do when he came onto the scene with You're a Big Boy Now.This and The Graduate, the more mature film that would follow, concern young men and older women.
Coppola, rather, simply enjoys himself as director, and his film is awash with recycled sight gags, lively performances and a spirited soundtrack by the Lovin' Spoonful.
I can't decide whether he's a kid in the sandbox his first time behind the camera or a bull in a china shop, as filmmakers are when they are passionately in love with the films they grew up with, the filmmaking process and film, period.The bungling young man this time is Peter Kastner.
Smokiest Movie of All Time.
I saw it about 15-20 years ago and I really enjoyed it except for one thing, most of the characters smoked.
If a movie like this was made today, it would draw a lot of fire from the American Cancer Society.
Such a great movie.
Francis Ford Coppola's early comedy is nothing like his later, full-bodied epics, but it's certainly very entertaining.
Peter Kastner is a 19-year old, essentially thrown out into the world by his bombastic father Rip Torn...all to the horror of his clinging mother Geraldine Page.
Kastner gets a lot more than he bargained for from wacky landlady Julie Harris (as Miss Thing), extremely misinformed co-worker Tony Bill and insane actress Barbara Darling (an uncharacteristically sexy Elizabeth Hartman).
The movie is hilarious with every single actor totally in tune with Coppola's acerbic take on life circa 1966.
Karen Black plays the only sane character so you know this is a very different movie.
There are great songs from John Sebastian including DARLING BE HOME SOON..
You're A Big Boy Now-Film Needs to Grow Up *1/2.
This is still another coming of age film, but it goes terribly awry.Was this the only film that husband-wife Rip Torn and Geraldine Page ever worked in together?
I think this played real to their own personal lives.What a difference a year makes.
The year before Elizabeth Hartman was up for best actress as the blind girl victimized by her Oscar-winning mother Shelley Winters.