April 2017 - Occasional Glimpses of the Sublime

Three sailors on a road trip. Two Navy lifers, portrayed by Jack Nicholson and Otis Young, are assigned to escort the hapless 18-year old recruit, Meadows (Randy Quaid), from Norfolk, Virginia, to military prison in New Hampshire, after he was caught stealing from a charity, which unfortunately for him happened to be the favourite charity of the Admiral’s wife. “Badass” Buddusky (Nicholson) and “Mule” Mulhall (Young), are given a week to carry out their duty, and initially aim to hustle Meadows to prison while keeping his per diem expenses for themselves, allowing for a bit of holiday drinking and whoring on their way back.

As the disproportionate severity of the eight-year sentence handed down to Meadows dawns upon them, Badass and Mule change their objective; now they want to show Meadows the best time of his life before he is incarcerated. Numerous shenanigans ensue, as the three eat, drink and fight their way across a naturalistic 1970s America.

Nicholson is a marvel to watch. Initially in a sour mood and underwhelmed by this “detail” that has been handed to him out of the blue, eventually the realisation of freedom sinks in and the prospect of fun beckons, at which point Nicholson ignites. His character, Buddusky, soon shows why he got his “Badass” nickname. He lives in the moment, is highly impulsive, and never squanders an opportunity for a good time, like the scene in which he spots some Marines entering the public lavatories at the station. He promptly follows them in to start a ruckus, drawing Mule and Meadows into the caper by dint of military solidarity. After battering the Marines in typically chaotic fashion they charge recklessly and hilariously out of the toilets and the station itself to seek their next adventure.

The film was nominated for three Academy Awards, but it failed to win any, and good critical notices did not translate into box office success. A few months later, Chinatown exploded onto the scene, and The Last Detail was somewhat eclipsed. Nicholson would soon go on to win an Oscar for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest — and quite rightly — but for me, his performance in The Last Detail is as fine an achievement as that role.

Here, we’ll see two representative scenes: first, a simple master class in how to eat and relish a hamburger, Buddusky-style; and second, the infamous bar scene in which Badass completely loses it when the bartender refuses to serve the underage Meadows and contrives to push all the wrong buttons as far as Badass is concerned. The disturbing and highly intimidating over-reaction from Badass toward the bartender is then tempered by a huge release of tension on the sidewalk afterwards as they laugh like drains at their escapade. “I am a bad ass, ain’t I?” says Buddusky. Yes sir, you certainly are.

Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy were arguably the most successful comedy team of all time, thriving during the early Classical Hollywood era of American cinema from the late 1920s to the mid-1940s. Known and loved throughout the world under a large variety of names (among them Dick und Doof
in Germany, Flip i Flap in Poland, and Cric e Croc in Italy), to the English-speaking world they were of course Laurel and Hardy: Stan the loveable simpleton and Olly the ambitious but pompous butt of many a “fine mess”.

The duo, like W C Fields and the Marx Brothers, had deep roots in stage and music
hall before making the successful transition from stage to screen. Stan Laurel began his career, when he was plain Arthur Jefferson, as Charlie Chaplin’s understudy when they were both stablemates of “Fred Karno’s army”, Karno being an influential theatre impresario and pioneer of slapstick comedy. Oliver Hardy, meanwhile, was cutting his teeth performing vaudeville and working for the Lubin motion picture production company, appearing in scores of one-reeler movies, mostly playing the “heavy”. Their paths began to cross when both worked for Hal Roach Studios in the early 1920s, but it was in 1927 that the two shared screen time together in the silent comedy films, Slipping Wives, Duck Soup, and With Love and Hisses. The positive audience reactions to the pairing was noted, and a comedy duo was born, and then cemented as they transferred so perfectly to the advent of the talkies.

Their comedy timing was impeccable, their physical comedy honed to perfection. With a pair of unmistakeable, born-for-comedy faces and physical morphology, just looking at a picture of them is enough to bring a smile to the face. Whilst so much early comedy has become dated, the comedy of Laurel and Hardy remains timeless, a whole eighty-odd years later. Testament to their enduring charm is the large group of modern-day Laurel and Hardy fans known as the “Sons of the Desert” (taken from their 1933 film of the same name) with chapters all over the world. A few years ago I took the family to a screen showing of some Laurel & Hardy reels at Birstall, and was both amused and reassured to see some of the chaps in the audience sporting the trademark Sons of the Desert fez! I was equally delighted to see my young daughters lapping up the physical comedy and giggling at these gags from a distant age.

Here, I have chosen a nice clip of the two getting into typically amusing bother, with Olly, as usual, paying for his imperious and blustering treatment of Stan, by coming off considerably the worst. It’s from the 1935 film, Thicker Than Water.

Occasional Glimpses of the Sublime

Monthly Archives: April 2017

Jack Nicholson plays Badass Buddusky in The Last Detail (1973)

Laurel & Hardy in Thicker Than Water (1935)

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