Kiss Me, Stupid
                             
Director: Billy Wilder
Year:  1964
Rating: 7.0
“Why does your husband call you Lambchop?" "Because sometimes I wear paper panties." I am not sure I even get that but it is one of a barrage of leering, smirking jokes in one of the most peculiar films I have come across in a good while. On its surface one might expect that this 1964 Billy Wilder film would be your conventional romantic comedy with perhaps a little more buzz than you would get from say a spunky Doris Day “I really just want a husband” film that people were used to back then. Most of these early 60’s romantic comedies were as dangerous and taboo as a day game at Wrigley Field – in the end all the conventions were met head on and marriage was in the wings waiting. But Kiss Me, Stupid starring Kim Novak, Dean Martin and Ray Walston is a salacious pizza in the face of everything tasteful and expected. Wilder was taking a crazy swing at Hollywood’s morality code with this insidious and subversive look at  marriage and sexuality. Back in 1964 large studios just didn’t take chances like this, but either Wilder’s reputation got it through or someone forgot to read the script. I can see almost see Takashi Miike doing a remake of this but with a lot more bodily secretion. But Wilder misjudged his market badly – first the Catholic Decency League did one of their massive protests against the film basically saying anyone who saw it would end up in Hell and then the critics savaged it like a bloated piñata and finally no one showed up to see it. But seeing it today, it is a gas – a really weird totally amoral one because you can’t help watching it through the time prism of 1964 and thinking what the hell were they thinking.



Dean Martin plays a Vegas crooner and actor who likes the dames a lot but a conveyor belt of cocktails even more – and the character’s name is Dean and he is part of the Rat Pack – so basically Martin is playing a rancid parody of himself and doesn’t seem at all embarrassed by it. He has to drive to Hollywood for an appearance on a TV show. He makes the mistake of stopping off in a small town called Climax (get it) where two frustrated song writers (Ray Walston and Cliff Osmond) sabotage his car so that they can get a chance to sing their songs to Dean. But they know Dean likes women and Walston worries that he will go for his very pretty wife (Felicia Farr – who was married to Jack Lemmon, who Wilder really wanted to play Walston’s part but he was busy). Walston picks a fight with his wife – on their wedding anniversary – so that she will go stay at her mothers and in her place he brings in a waitress/part time hooker from a nearby dive – this being Kim Novak who will do anything you want for the whole night for $25. $25. Talk about inflation. So he tries to pawn off his made-up-wife on Martin to have sex with in a really really creepy way – meanwhile his wife comes back and thinks he is fooling around and so sets out to have her own fun. And she does. With Dean. And Walston ends up in bed with Novak. And everyone is better off for it. No nodding to the Hollywood code back then that you have to be punished in some way for infidelity. And smutty innuendoes throughout. I think my mouth was agape much of the film. Interestingly, after Lemmon turned down the role Wilder brought in Peter Sellers to play it and he did until he had a heart attack. Some say it was just an excuse to get off the set because he was going crazy with the script.