Continuing with Ann-Margret week, we move from a movie about a fake Elvis to one with the real deal.

Sometimes movies are just fluff, and that’s OK. Viva Las Vegas is a candy colored Elvis vehicle that is 0% substance, but gives you enough of a buzz to carry you through the day.

Elvis plays Lucky Johnson, a mechanic/race car driver that is trying to get money to purchase a new engine so he can race in the Las Vegas Grand Prix.  Ann-Margret is Rusty Miller, a hotel pool swim instructor that brings her car to Lucky’s mechanic because it’s causing her problems.

Both Lucky and his friend/rival Count Elmo Mancini are smitten with her (because how could you not be) and immediately do what I believe all car mechanics do and lie to Rusty about how much work it will take to fix her car in an attempt to squeeze more money out of her get her to stick around longer.  When Count Elmo realizes that Lucky might have the upper hand, Elmo fixes Rusty’s car and sends her on her way without grabbing her name or occupation.  Cock-blocked Lucky hits the Las Vegas strip in an effort to find her, because for some reason he believes Rusty’s a showgirl?  I’m presuming he assumed this based on how nice her legs look, which… oof.

How can showgirl costumes look so freaking ugly?

After a night of Lucky cosplaying as the pied piper of drunk cowboys, he lives up to his namesake when he discovers Rusty is the swim instructor at the hotel he is staying at.  He steals Elmo’s guitar and tries to woo her with a little ditty, but she’s having none of it and leads him off the diving board.

I’m going to use “he’s got about as much appeal as a soggy cigarette” in my everyday vernacular from now on, so be prepared.

The wad of cash Lucky was carrying on him to buy the engine he needed for the race is now soggy and sucked up a pool filter!  Oh no!  He decides to solve this problem by getting a food service job at Rusty’s hotel, and now that he has access to her work schedule, further harass her.  She agrees to go on a date with this weird stalker for whatever reason, and asks him to meet her at the University of Nevada because she wanted to school him in the art of dance.

I’ve been watching a lot of movies from the 1940s and 1950s and oh man, being catapulted into the 1960s with this movie was the shot in the arm I needed.  I love Ann-Margret’s dancing, her slack-jawed facial expressions, and her unparalleled enthusiasm.  It is the best representation of how dancing changed in this decade, and was probably what Danny Kaye was bitching about in White Christmas.

I’m going to take a moment to gush about Ann-Margret here, because her charisma is absolutely insane.  The moment she appeared on screen, it took my breath away.  And not just because they were objectifying her like crazy, but because her smile is completely disarming.  She’s charming and sexy and sometimes I kind of want her to eat me alive.  If that wasn’t enough, she’s also cool as fuck and continues to ride her motorcycle well into her eighties because she likes the speed. *swoons*

Anyway, after their dancing duet, they go on the most elaborate date that features a set of increasingly intense activities.

It concludes with another dance number that I wish was sung by Ray Charles instead of Elvis.  Actually, a lot of performances he gave in this movie had me wishing the original person was singing it, which made me realize I don’t really give a shit about Elvis?  I mean, he’s fine I guess, but he certainly doesn’t deserve Ann-Margret in this movie and didn’t in real life.  It’s kind of frustrating her legacy is always going to be tied to their affair, like, can you imagine dating someone almost 60 years ago and making more than 60 movies after this one, and still being asked about him every time you are interviewed?  Bleh.

Also, peep Toni Basil as the girl with the red dress on.  Iconic.

The next morning, Rusty picks a fight with Elvis about his dangerous profession and informs him she’d rather plant trees than bury his lifeless body in the ground.  This is the exact moment where they should have gone their separate ways.  They’re maybe 48 hours into knowing each other and it wouldn’t be hard to call it a wash and move on, but noooooooo, they need to double down on this mess and emotionally torture each other.

First, Rusty goes on a date with Lucky’s friend/rival Elmo, which Lucky literally crashes several times with plates of food and a song.  Second, they both decide to compete in the conveniently-timed staff talent contest at the hotel – Lucky because he believes the prize will be enough money for a shiny new race car engine, and Rusty to guarantee Lucky doesn’t succeed.  This is healthy.

Rusty performs this saucy number for her coworkers, and Elvis gets down to the titular song.  The applause-o-meter can’t determine a winner, so after a coin toss, Lucky is considered the victor.  Instead of a cash lump sum, however, Lucky is gifted a honeymoon package at the hotel?!  Rusty wins a pool table, which is something that she’ll definitely use and isn’t a burden to store.  Lucky tries to trade prizes with Rusty in an attempt to pawn it for cash, which only disappoints her further.  After his plan is truly thwarted, Lucky wanders around the city moping to a song that Frank Sinatra should have sang.  One of them wants to settle down and live a risk free life, and the other wants to burn all the cash in his pocket and race fast cars, but he still loves herrrrrr.

Again, instead of cutting her losses and dumping this dude who clearly doesn’t share the same values as her, Rusty shows up at Lucky’s place of employment with her father and tries to pick yet another fight?  This plan is completely unclear to me.  Unfortunately for her, Lucky’s friend somehow got the money to buy the engine for the car, and he, Lucky, and Rusty’s father get straight to work to installing it in Lucky’s car, as the Grand Prix begins at midnight.  Rusty leaves to go make snacks.

How does a hotel lifeguard afford a car like this??

After angrily assembling several sandwiches, Rusty returns to the shop and walks the fine line between genuinely trying to help, or purposely sabotaging their endeavor.  Through the magic of a jump cut, the car is magically finished, Lucky immediately races in the Grand Prix for like 6 hours on no sleep, and miraculously wins.  It’s revealed Rusty’s father paid for Lucky’s engine, so Rusty decides to get married to Lucky after all, even though there’s no way this couple is going to make it whatsoever.  The end.

This movie was written in 11 days and it shows… It’s not going to change the world, but you do get to watch Ann-Margret sing and shimmy around in adorable 60s fits, if that’s the kind of thing you’re into.

A horny adult man makes the moves on some teenagers before joining the army, but make it wholesome.

My first experience with Bye Bye Birdie the musical was when my local high school did a production of it when I was a kid.  I had very little interest in the show before seeing it, as my opinion of Elvis’s Christmas album was very low, and I knew Birdie was supposed to be based on him.  I only vaguely recollect that one of the girls pretended to smoke and an old lady who sat behind me gasped and exclaimed, “Oh my god, is she smoking?!” like she thought some drama teacher would let their student light up on stage.  Other than that, completely forgettable, not something I was into.

Years went by, and during my Mad Men obsession I watched the episode completely centered around the Sterling Cooper Advertising Agency’s attempt to recreate this iconic opening number to sell diet soda to women.  It was, unknowingly at the time, my second exposure to Ann-Margret (my first surprisingly being the 10th Kingdom miniseries my friends and I would marathon every once and a while because Scott Cohen is adorable), and I was absolutely fascinated by her.  I’ve always wanted to check out the movie based on Ann-Margret and Ann-Margret alone, and man, did she deliver.

This woman was made for the camera.  When she sings, “Guess I’ll always care,” I felt my heart skip a beat.  You just can’t replicate this, as Roger Sterling astutely stated when their client disliked the commercial, that the girl they cast is “Not Ann-Margret”.

This musical was inspired by the real-world reaction to Elvis Presley being drafted into the United States military.  News travels fast that Conrad will be joining up ranks, to the despair of all teenage girls across the country, and one man named Albert (played by Dick Van Dyke after originating this role on Broadway) who wrote him a song for Birdie’s next motion picture he’s now not going to film.  Since this is the first song he’s sold in 6 years, Albert takes this as a sign to give up the profession his mother wanted him to pursue and become a biochemist, since, you know, he got the degree and all.

Today I learned a yardbird is a military recruit, and not a band or a kitchy lawn ornament my grandfather had when I was a kid.

Albert’s secretary/long-time fiancé Rosie (played by Janet Leigh), who relies on the song’s success as her ticket to get Albert to finally marry her against his mother’s wishes, cooks up a scheme with Ed Sullivan to have Birdie perform one of Albert’s songs called “The Last Kiss” on Ed’s show before Birdie ships out.  She’ll get some random teenage Birdie fan from Ohio to appear on stage so Birdie can kiss her, and thus every other teenager symbolically, goodbye.  Rosie hopes that people will like the song and buy it as it will be Birdie’s last release for a while.  Ed agrees to the concept, and Rosie heads to the local Conrad Birdie Fan Club to change some heart-eyed girl’s future.  It’s wild to think there once was a time where someone could pick up a phone and ask a person on the other end to connect them to a child whose name some fan club chapter leader let you snag out of a file cabinet at random.

Kim McAfee, who is not the founder of the shitty antivirus software that somehow consumes all your computer’s resources in order to try and protect it, is that lucky teenage girl that Rosie picked for a grown-ass man to violate on national television in front of millions of people.  She’s more preoccupied by her recent “pinning” by a boy at her school named Hugo (played by Bobby Rydell of Grease’s Rydell High fame and nothing else).  Kim dreamingly regales the tale to her overly-enthusiastic friend Ursula over the phone, who then spreads this new information like wildfire.  I’m super curious how often this “pinning” thing happened in real life, since it seems like a weird gesture I’ve only witnessed in movies.  I’d ask my parents about it, but they were fresh out the womb when this movie was supposed to take place, and my grandparents are all dead, so I’m going to assume it’s a thing someone did one time and now every other piece of media uses it as shorthand for deciding to get awkwardly groped in the back of a car as opposed to a physical object a guy gives to a girl to wear on her blouse.

Today I learned that “What’s the Story, Morning Glory?” was a thing people said, and not an Oasis album.

When Rosie reveals her plan to Albert, he reacts well until Rosie suggests he use this good news as an opportunity to tell his mother they’re getting married.  When his mother shows up to the office he immediately breaks this promise as she is a walking, talking guilt machine.  Rosie proceeds to try and contact Kim anyway, despite her future with a JustNoMIL.  Kim is still goo-goo for Hugo, as she believes getting felt-up for 5 seconds by her high school sweetheart makes her a woman now or something.

I hate this song so much because Ann-Margret puts on her socks with the heels on the side of her legs and that has to be uncomfortable.

When Kim finds out Birdie is coming to Sweet Apple, OH to lock lips with her, she devolves into a screaming mess.  Hugo is upset that his new steady is going to be kissing an old, famous stranger, but she gaslights him into accepting it because the event will be good for the economy or some shit.  The entire gang gathers in one of the worst states in the country for Birdie’s arrival, and everyone predictably loses their shit for the knock-off Elvis.

This guy does absolutely nothing for me, and I’m like kind of annoyed that Ann-Margret thinks he’s the bees knees.

The next 30 minutes of this movie suffer from “we couldn’t figure out how else to include these songs so we had them all happen in the house so we wouldn’t have to build more sets” syndrome.  The commercial I watched on Plex about Sam Adam’s Summer Ale with your cousin from Boston produced more laughs out of me in 15 seconds than literally everything from this slog of the middle of the movie.  Kim’s parents are now hesitant to allow Kim to kiss Birdie because the men are all upset at the effect Birdie’s had on their wives, until Albert and Rosie offer them a spot on the Ed Sullivan show to promote Dad’s fertilizer business.  Hugo is similarly concerned about being cucked on the small screen, but Ann-Margret uses her Ann-Margret powers and persuades him, yet again, to cool his jets.  Rosie is still upset that Albert is letting his mother hold their relationship hostage, and he penguin waddles in an attempt to earn her forgiveness.  When Albert tries to tell his mother his plans for the future, she reacts in a completely reasonable way by attempting suicide.

The next day, during rehearsal, all hell breaks loose and destroys the group’s best laid plans.  After Birdie plants a practice kiss on Kim and she faints, Hugo breaks up with her on the spot.  Albert finds out that the Russian Ballet that is performing on the show is going to take an extra 4 minutes, so the song, the kiss, and everyone’s speeches are going to be cut, only allowing 30 seconds for a small wave from Conrad.  Bye Bye 2 million records sold, a wedding, and a booming fertilizer business.

Birdie is unfazed by this news and hits up a local club to flirt with a group of high school students.  Kim, now recently single, tries some college boys on for size, which sends Hugo into a complete frenzy.  He storms off leaving Kim alone without her beau or her Birdie.

God, I love how Ann-Margret dances; she was tailor-made for the 1960s.  Also, the way this number tried to replicate the dance at the gym from West Side Story is hilarious.

Heartbroken and disappointed, Rosie heads to the only other club in Sweet Apple that serves liquor.  Albert runs into her there, along with his mother, who has somehow snagged a date?  Rosie spots Albert, and in a truly bizarre scene tries to get an entire group of Shriners to violate her to make Albert jealous???  He comes to her rescue, and she swoons at his display of possession.  They decide to elope after the Ed Sullivan show so Rosie can finally lose her bloom.

Y’know, I was kind of curious why Rosie was styled like Anita from West Side Story, until I found out that Chita Rivera originated this role on Broadway.  This would *also* explain why “Spanish Rose” was in the Broadway show but cut from the movie.  In the musical, Albert’s mom didn’t like Rosie because she was Hispanic, and I don’t know if they omitted this because of the casting of Janet or because they decided to avoid the subject all together by not casting Chita.  Chita apparently doesn’t like the movie adaptation of the show, either, and like, I can’t really blame her there.  They cast someone else in her role that couldn’t dance, and the studio had the nerve to ask if they could film Chita performing so Janet could use the tape to rehearse from.  Hollywood is ruthless.

Albert, after unsuccessfully trying to convince the ballet to change their song back to something shorter, instead decides to use his biochemistry degree to cook speed and drug the conductor.  When it finally kicks in, the orchestra has no choice but to follow along to the maestro’s new tempo, to the absolute frustration of the dancers on stage.  I found it odd that they sped up the footage of the ballet instead of trying to get the dancers to struggle with the faster music, but whatever… maybe it was too dangerous to get them to rush with the all the lifts, who knows.

Anyway, Birdie gets to sing the song, and instead of kissing Kim, he gets a punch in the face by a teenage Hugo.  Although the night was a disaster, Albert tells his mother he’s marrying Rosie anyway, and his mother surprisingly doesn’t care because she got hitched to the dude she met in the bar the night before.  Everyone lives happily ever after, except Conrad, since he’s still going into the army after all.  The end.

I don’t have the best memory, but when I watched this movie I was like, “hmmm… this feels… off”.  TURNS OUT it’s because they changed a lot of the plot?  In the musical, Rosie convinces Hugo to sabotage the broadcast by punching Birdie because she was mad at Albert, and afterward Birdie and Kim run away together.  Birdie is later arrested for trying to hook up with an underage kid (which is kind of hilarious considering Elvis’ real-life relationship with a teenager while he was deployed), and Albert has to bail him out and disguise him as an old woman to get him out of town.  Also, there’s no Russian ballet, biochemistry degree, or drugging the composer.  Albert simply decides to be an English teacher, marries Rosie, and moves to Pumpkin Falls, Iowa.

Paul Lynde, who originated the role of the dad on Broadway and is doing The Most in this movie, had some harsh words for the remake as well, insinuating the changes were made to shift the focus to Ann-Margret as opposed to the rest of the cast.  The opening and closing number “Bye Bye Birdie” was written for the film and payed for out of the director’s pocket, which kind of proves Paul’s point.  Similarly to the Hairspray musical movie adaptation, this film lost its teeth, and is mostly a sugary-sweet ode to teenage frenzy and how to protect your virginity At All Costs.  That said, I didn’t like the stage show when I saw it a billion years ago, either.  But I liked it better than whatever this is.  Let’s thank the movie for launching the careers of Dick Van Dyke and Ann-Margret and instead watch Bye Bye Greasy anytime we get an itch for a 1950s musical about a cool guy in a leather jacket.

The Who’s well-loved 1969 rock opera album Tommy has been adapted for the screen, and is almost the furthest thing from a feel-good picture that you can get.  Who knew that the sound of childhood trauma could be so goddamn catchy?

When I was a young girl, my father would play the album Tommy, he really liked the band.  Tommy was one of those albums I played on repeat when I was elementary school-aged.  My dad had copied the album to a cassette, and me and my yellow Walkman would head to the bus stop every morning blasting “The Acid Queen”.  I’ve mentioned before I was an obnoxious kid, and one memory that has unfortunately stuck with me for like 25 years is this guy on the bus asking my sister to tell me to stop singing out loud to “Pinball Wizard” because it was annoying.  I sunk into my seat as if he had punched me straight in the gut.

Being young, my understanding of the plot was pretty basic, and oh boy, the movie translation of this was um… I was not prepared for the ride I had boarded.   Even as someone who is unbelievably familiar with the source material, this was a rough watch.

Tommy begins during World War 2, and England is getting bombed by Nazis.  Tommy’s mom and dad are on their honeymoon, and when they return, Tommy’s father is sent off to war and is presumably killed in action.  Tommy is born on V.E. Day and never knows his biological father.  His mother (Ann-Margret) hooks up with a dude she met on vacation, Uncle Frank, and when Tommy’s father returns unannounced 6 years later, her lover kills him by hitting him with a lamp.  Dude lived through a plane crash, and its the bedside lamp that finally gets him.  Tommy witnesses the murder, and Uncle Frank and his mom plead with him not to tell anybody.  The trauma of this event triggers psychosomatic deafness and blindness in Tommy.  His parents are understandably concerned about him, even though they are the whole reason this happened in the first place.

His mom is weirdly fixated with his salvation, and takes Tommy to church to see if a supremely uncharismatic Eric Clapton and statue of Marilyn Monroe can heal him.  The congregation, in a very classy move that is not at all disparaging to Marilyn Monroe’s legacy, downs alcohol and prescription medication as communion.  The healing goes about as well as expected.

After this, his Uncle Frank takes Tommy to a prostitute, who drugs and presumably rapes him, thinking it might snap him out of it.  When that doesn’t work, his parents then leave him with one babysitter that beats and tortures him, and another that sexually molests him, so… fun times.  My notes perfectly illustrate how glad I was to watch this series of events unfold.

Realizing Tommy can entertain himself just by looking in a mirror, his parents get loaded on the couch, leaving him alone to wander out of the house.  He stumbles upon a pinball machine in a junkyard.  His parents discover he’s really fucking good at it, and introduce him into the very financially lucrative world of pinball competitions.

My favorite scene in this movie is watching Elton John play a keyboard attached to a pinball machine while wearing the largest shoes I’ve ever seen on a human.  They hinder his movement so much he can only point with his left arm over and over again to show his enthusiasm.  When Tommy wins the Pinball championship, a pack of Waldos haul away Elton’s defeated body.

Now that Tommy’s family is rolling in dough, his parents buy a mansion and a yacht, and Ann-Margret tries to bury her guilt surrounding Tommy’s condition through retail therapy, and literally smothering her grief with chocolate pudding.

I swear to god, Ann-Margret is the only person who actually knew what kind of movie she was filming.  She’s crazed, dramatic, and her voice is so fucking awesome (unlike some of the other actors they cast…).  Still, the disservice of making her swim in a sea of baked beans… which, FUN FACT: sent her into the ER because part of the broken champagne bottle rocketed out of the television when they were pelting bubbles at her and cut her hand large enough that she needed 27 stitches to close it.  She came back to film the next day because she is a fucking queen.

Tommy’s parents take him to Jack Nicholson putting on an haughty accent to see if he can fix Tommy, and all he succeeds in doing is putting the moves on Ann-Margret.  She takes Tommy back to the house and dances him into the mirror, which sets him free to swim and run shirtless across the country without shoes on.

It’s around this point of the movie that I realize Ann-Margret and I have *a thing* for young Roger Daltrey, and I don’t know what to do with this knowledge.

Seriously, she’s only like 3 years older than him and she’s supposed to be playing his mother.  The film industry is so fucked up.

Tommy tells his mother than she needs to relinquish all her material possessions, baptizes her in the ocean, and forms his own pinball-based religion.  His followers treat him like a messiah, looking for him to provide the path to salvation.  He invites them onto his compound, puts his child molester Uncle Ernie in charge of a bunch of children, and Uncle Frank in charge of recruitment and merchandising. 

His campers are fairly pissed they’re being milked for every dime they have, but Tommy is all, “I haven’t handed out my syllabus yet, wait until you hear what the curriculum is going to be!”  When they discover it’s about turning off all distractions and only playing pinball, his congregation are all like, “Fuck that!” and riot, murdering both of Tommy’s parents.  Now that his oppressors are dead, Tommy is truly free.  He runs through literal fire, jumps into a lake in jeans, and climbs a slippery waterfall AND a mountain in bare feet, making me wonder what kind of insurance they had on this picture that they allowed Roger Daltrey to do all of that and hang glide into a sea of bikers. The 1970s were an unencumbered time.

I watched several interviews with Peter Townshend to understand where the idea of this rock opera came about, and holy shit, this story is just based in his own traumatic childhood experiences.  From his perspective, after WW2, the people in England who had lived with the constant fear of sudden death internalized all of their associated trauma.  They had children they weren’t emotionally equip to parent, leaving them to be vulnerable to people who wanted to exploit them.

Tommy’s constant plea in the movie was to be seen and heard by those who were supposed to protect and care for him, only for them to be ignorant to the effect their negligence was having on him.  Tommy tries to save other broken people who need to feel safe, only for them to revolt, take the only family he’s ever known away from him, and abandon him.  This is an unbelievably depressing movie, and the fact it resonated with so many people, I just… I don’t know how to process that, because it’s heartbreaking.

So, yeah, this movie is weird as shit, but it does try to impart that people who are exposed to repeated stressful events will only hurt themselves and those around them if they try to repress those experiences.  I’m not sure the movie effectively communicated what The Who was trying to convey in the original album, however.  I think the message is overshadowed by the strong aesthetic.  

I suffered with intense anxiety as a child (still do, although I have mechanisms now as an adult to help manage it) and my parents didn’t know what the fuck to do with me.  I would say 90% of the time they’d treat my anxiety like I was personally trying to inconvenience them, and the other 10% they’d make fun of me for it.  So there I’d be, trying to hide my anxiety attacks and feeling like I was going to die (or if I was lucky, just vomit) because they’d get angry or tell me to suck it up if they knew what was going on.  I did not have a happy childhood.  I, like Tommy, just wanted them to understand me and show any amount of compassion.  However, watching this movie, I somehow did not find myself relating to his story at all.  I was too distracted by Marilyn Monroe-dressed nuns, a 2-story tall Elton John, child abuse and molestation played off as a joke, and Ann-Margret drowning in bean syrup that I completely missed the intention.  I also think 1970s religious movements had a tendency to be rather exploitative, and I have regrettably listened to far too many My Favorite Murders to not see Tommy’s fans and think, “You’re in a cult, call your dad.”  It’s hard to be automatically empathetic to the abused when they lead others to be victimized by their abusers.

I would 1000% recommend Tommy the album.  This movie is worth a watch if you like The Who, but even as someone who loves the original music, I’m probably not going to put it in my constant rotation.

That concludes rock band movie musical week!  The orchestra nerd inside of me is excited to move on to Carmen Jones next.