{"id":25070,"date":"2017-04-21T18:29:02","date_gmt":"2017-04-21T22:29:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=25070"},"modified":"2017-04-21T21:08:06","modified_gmt":"2017-04-22T01:08:06","slug":"the-bootleg-files-another-nice-mess","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2017\/04\/21\/the-bootleg-files-another-nice-mess\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bootleg Files: Another Nice Mess"},"content":{"rendered":"

BOOTLEG FILES 586:<\/strong> \u201cAnother Nice Mess\u201d (1972 comedy film starring Rich Little).<\/p>\n

LAST SEEN:<\/strong> It is on YouTube.<\/p>\n

AMERICAN HOME VIDEO:<\/strong> None.<\/p>\n

REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS:<\/strong> Even the film\u2019s producers admitted it stank.<\/p>\n

CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE:<\/strong> Unlikely.<\/p>\n

Humorist Leo Rosten once commented, \u201cSatire is focused bitterness.\u201d It is hard to find a more accurate description of satire \u2013 and in view of today\u2019s surplus of Alt-Left comedians going out of their way to denigrate the president and his family, the level of bitterness has become hopelessly poisoned.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

But satire once had more bite than bile. In the late 1960s, the Smothers Brothers got the rare chance to use a national television platform to present their view of the political scene within the context of skits and songs. By 1972, Tom Smothers opted to bring his brand of political humor to the big screen. Brother Dick chose to abstain from this effort, and he was replaced by Bob Einstein, an actor\/writer who was part of the Smothers Brothers\u2019 controversial television show, and Jonathan Haze, an actor in B-level flicks (most notably Roger Corman\u2019s \u201cThe Little Shop of Horrors\u201d). Smothers and Haze served as producers and financed the work from their own savings, while Einstein was the writer\/director. Their project was a feature film send-up on the Nixon Administration called \u201cAnother Nice Mess,\u201d which was scheduled for release ahead of the 1972 election.<\/p>\n

However, \u201cAnother Nice Mess\u201d had the sad distinction of being the worst political satire ever put on film. Even Smothers and Haze later admitted the film was terrible. Much of the problem was that the film did not attempt to offer any satirical comment on how Richard Nixon conducted his presidency. Instead, it provided the strange notion of reimagining Nixon and his vice president, Spiro Agnew, along the lines of Laurel and Hardy. In this case, Agnew (as played by character actor Herb Voland) was given Stan Laurel\u2019s voices and mannerisms, while Nixon (mimicked by Rich Little) imitated Oliver Hardy\u2019s on-screen persona. (The characters are called Spiro and Richie, not by their surnames.) Adding to the confusion is Little playing Nixon as Nixon, who is intercut watching the film in a screening room while offering dour commentary on what is transpiring, along with old clips of Laurel and Hardy that are arranged in a manner to suggest they are either watching the film or are involved in its action.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnother Nice Mess\u201d gets off feebly at the presidential inauguration, with Spiro pulling a very long thread from Richie\u2019s clothing that eventually causes his pants to drop while he ascends the stairs. The duo then get into more mischief in a presidential limousine ride, with Spiro mistaking the middle finger salute for a peace sign.<\/p>\n

The film\u2019s one and only charming moment comes when the pair arrive at the White House for the first time and discover a Victrola. Although there is no crank to operate it, Spiro sticks his index finger into the machine and twirls it, enabling the Victrola to come to life. With music filling the room, Richie and Spiro duplicate the Laurel and Hardy dance from \u201cWay Out West,\u201d and Voland and Little perfectly capture the choreography of that classic old comedy segment.<\/p>\n

From there, \u201cAnother Nice Mess\u201d gets into a more contemporary vibe, with Richie and Spiro being introduced to their multi-ethnic Secret Service detail \u2013 the Polish member is identified as a \u201cPolack\u201d and the African-American agent, we are told, \u201cjumps like a true Negro.\u201d There is also a sexy secretary for the men, and Spiro puts the \u201cvice\u201d in vice president by squeezing her breast. (It makes a loud bicycle horn-worthy honk.)<\/p>\n

At this point, \u201cAnother Nice Mess\u201d wobbles all over the place between lame shenanigans with a vaguely political foundation. The President of Persia and his wife come for a state dinner, with Richie spilling his drink down his front while Spiro placing a hot food tray into the Persian leader\u2019s hands, causing him to empty its contents on his unsuspecting wife. Richie and Spiro go out in public and get into the middle of a riot that is started when a hard-hat construction worker throws a brick at a long-haired hippie (Steve Martin, in his movie debut) \u2013 the brick misses the hippie but bangs into the president, who mistakenly believes his vice president hit him.<\/p>\n

If that\u2019s not bad enough, there is a subplot involving an elderly Adolf Hitler living in the White House while working as a spy for the Communist Chinese government. Really, don\u2019t ask about that.<\/p>\n

The backstory behind \u201cAnother Nice Mess\u201d is far more entertaining than anything captured on camera. It seems that the real President Nixon got wind of the film and was not amused. Tom Smothers then got the word that Nixon was wise to him, and he made a concentrated effort to ensure that neither his home nor office had any trace of illegal substances. This advance word paid off for Smothers, as his home was the subject of a drug raid by the police during the post-production period.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnother Nice Mess\u201d had John A. Alonzo as its cinematographer. Alonzo was behind the camera for Smothers\u2019 starring film \u201cGet to Know Your Rabbit,\u201d so one can assume Smothers recruited him for this flick. Alonzo was very much in demand as a cinematographer \u2013 his 1972 credits also included the Oscar-nominated \u201cSounder,\u201d the documentary \u201cWattstax,\u201d \u201cPete \u2018n\u2019 Tillie\u201d and \u201cLady Sings the Blues,\u201d and in 1974 his work on \u201cChinatown\u201d earned him an Academy Award nomination.<\/p>\n

A screening of \u201cAnother Nice Mess\u201d was used in a Hollywood fundraiser for the Democratic Party, but few moviegoers ever got to see it. The film played briefly in a handful of theaters in the Midwest and the West Coast \u2013 it doesn\u2019t seem to have opened in New York or any East Coast market. Part of the problem could have been the running time \u2013 \u201cAnother Nice Mess\u201d clocked in at a scant 66 minutes, far shorter than the average feature film \u2013 and it did not help that another satiric film about Nixon, Emile de Antonio\u2019s harsh documentary \u201cMillhouse: A White Comedy,\u201d had already been in theatrical release. Ultimately, though, the creators of this film failed realize that the American public did not share their views: the 1972 election saw an extraordinary landslide victory for Nixon and Agnew. Of course, the public quickly turned on the men and they were forced to resign their offices as a result of separate criminal scandals within two years of the release of \u201cAnother Nice Mess.\u201d (The fact that Nixon and Agnew had a terrible working relationship was not public knowledge until they left Washington.)<\/p>\n

The film also created a major financial loss for Smothers and Haze \u2013 despite a low $250,000 budget, it only grossed $30,000. The poor quality of the work plus the quickly dated nature of its content kept it out of re-release \u2013 it was never on television, nor was it ever made available in any home entertainment format. A blurry dupe is on YouTube<\/a> for anyone that has become bored today\u2019s line-up of would-be political satirists and wants a retro injection of bad comedy.<\/p>\n

IMPORTANT NOTICE: While this weekly column acknowledges the presence of rare film and television productions through the so-called collector-to-collector market, this should not be seen as encouraging or condoning the unauthorized duplication and distribution of copyright-protected material, either through DVDs or Blu-ray discs or through postings on Internet video sites.<\/em>
\n
\nListen to \u201cThe Online Movie Show with Phil Hall<\/a>\u201d on SoundCloud, with a new episode every Monday.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BOOTLEG FILES 586: \u201cAnother Nice Mess\u201d (1972 comedy film starring Rich Little). LAST SEEN: It is on YouTube. AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: None. REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: Even the film\u2019s producers admitted it stank. CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Unlikely. Humorist Leo Rosten once commented, \u201cSatire is focused bitterness.\u201d It is hard to find […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":25071,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1513],"tags":[1675,219,595,789,1676,898,1678,1677,1679],"class_list":["post-25070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bootleg-files","tag-another-nice-mess","tag-comedy","tag-laurel-and-hardy","tag-politics","tag-richard-nixon","tag-satire","tag-smothers-brothers","tag-spiro-agnew","tag-steve-martin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25070"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25070\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25074,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25070\/revisions\/25074"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}