Meet Me At The Wrecking Ball - A Blog With A Cause

"Is that the worst word of the new culture - 'blog'?"
- Jerry Seinfeld on The Late Show With David Letterman 10/29/07

Actually, I think it's one of the best.

This post is going to be a bit different from my usual array of riveting reviews and looney lists - this time I have a cause. I rarely write about things local, except for mentions of the theatre I work at part time (The Varsity), but it has come to my attention that a historic house not far from where I live in Chapel Hill, NC is in danger of being demolished very soon. How this pertains to Film Babble is that this house was used as a film location almost 40 years ago. The house is the Edward Kidder Graham House (named for a former UNC President who died in 1918) located on Battle Lane at the edge of the UNC campus and the movie it was used in was THREE IN THE ATTIC (Dir. Richard Wilson, 1968).

Haven't heard of it? That's okay, I hadn't either - It isn't available from Netflix having never had a proper DVD release (I found online that some outfit called Must Have Films is selling DVD copies of it but they don't look quite legit) and VHS copies are fairly hard to find. After some phoning around I found a shoddy old videocassette copy at a local video store (a building surely to be demolished soon as well) and viewed it anxious to see some Lyndon B. Johnson era shots of my hometown. Through the awful picture full of drop-outs (horizontal white streaks) and the incomprehensible muffled sound I was able to make out the Edward Kidder Graham House as well as many shots of the UNC campus, surrounding neighborhoods and the Alpha Tau Omega House on Franklin Street which was used prominently in a party sequence.

The movie itself is honestly a pretty schlocky 60's sexploitation picture. Made by American International Films, a company that specialized in low budget fringe films that would appeal to teenagers, it is by today's AMERICAN PIE standards a fairly lame affair - though one not without its kitschy dated charms. James Dean look-a-like (and somebody who studied Dean's every move) Christopher Jones finds himself locked in a sorority house attic (The Edward Kidder Graham House stands in for Ford Hall as UNC doubles as the equally ficticious Willard College For Men and Fulton - A Women's College) after 3 college girls ( Yvette Mimieux, Judy Pace, and Maggie Thrett) find out he's been triple timing them. As Paxton Quigley, Jones' voice-over narration promises a look at the "groovy subculture of today's female" and he says "you've heard of the sexual revolution...well, I'm probably one of its first casualties" but this is pretty grandiose talk coming from someone decked out in what looks like the JC Penny Jim Morrison line - fluffy white shirt, love beads and yes, leather pants. No such social sexual commentary or satire is really presented - just dialogue like this between Quigley and girlfriend #1's (Mimieux) father, played by Richard Derr, who bursts in on them living in sin:

Mr. Clinton: "What kind of a man are you?"

Paxton Quigley: "Well, I think I know...I know where it's at."

Mr. Clinton: "What?"

Paxton Quigley: "I know my way around."

Mr. Clinton: "Are you one of those potheads?"

Yep, that's about the level of insight in THREE IN THE ATTIC. There was potential as Roger Ebert notes in his 1968 review that it could've been a "near GRADUATE" but the film makers motives were just as cheap as its budget. Essentially a series of love montages hanging on a bare narrative thread this movie still has some lure as a curio - fans of college cult films * will delight in its pre-ANIMAL HOUSE sensibility, cinéastes will enjoy the notion of what direction James Dean's career might've gone in (or at least looked like) had he lived through to that turbulent time, but for this blog's purposes Chapel Hill residents will celebrate THREE IN THE ATTIC as a snapshot of the town in the late 60's and a portrait of a house worth preserving and restoring.

* It is most certainly a cult movie - Joe Bob's Ultimate B-Movie Guide gives it 4 stars and says of it - "one of the weirdest flicks of the sixties" (Joe Bob Briggs, 2000).

Postnote #1: There was actually a sequel entitled UP IN THE CELLAR (1970) also known as THREE IN THE CELLAR which also had Judy Pace in it. It was a little of a bigger deal with Larry Hagman and Joan Collins but since it was filmed in New Mexico I didn't seek it out.

Postnote #2: For more information and pictures of the Edward Kidder Graham House and other historic houses in Chapel Hill please visit :

The Preservation Society of Chapel Hill

Flickr: Photos from chapelhill.preservation

Also this interview with Preservation Society of Chapel Hill Executive Director Ernest Dollar is worth a read:

Independent Weekly: News: Q&A: Ernest Dollar

More later...

I Think I Smell A BORAT...

"We support your war of terror!"
- BORAT (Sacha Baron Cohen)  




The #1 movie-film in America right now with an approval rating of 96% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer (you know, the site that tallies up all the major reviews) BORAT: CULTURAL LEARNINGS OF AMERICA FOR MAKE BENEFIT GLORIOUS NATION OF KAZAKHSTAN is really burning it up this season.



It does has a lot of funny moments though I personally feel much of the material would be better seen in individual YouTube clips, because even at just 84 minutes the guys routine wears a bit.



Peering in on the sold out shows at my local hometown theater where I work part-time, a drop-off in riotous laughter is strongly evident in the last third of the movie. One sequence in particular I could have done without, a nude wrestling match between BORAT (Sacha Baron Cohen) and his morbidly obese manager (Ken Davitian) that starts over a squabble in a fancy-pants hotel room and spills out into the lobby, so that the shocked public can witness of course. 



Thankfully black bars were inserted to cover the naughty bits. That's definitely he scene where my laughter dropped off. 



Being the second most hyped movie of the year (the first being SNAKES ON A PLANE) I was surprised at the critical reaction.



It's getting a lot of incredibly favorable notices remarking on the supposed sharpness of the satire and the telling socio-political statements it makes. Some examples:



"The brilliance of BORAT is that its comedy is as pitiless as its social satire and just as brainy" - Manohla Dargis (New York Times) 



"He makes us squirm until we laugh and laugh until we squirm, holding a mirror to our darkest fears and prejudices." - Bob Townsend (Alanta Journal-Constitution) 



"Evil comedy, a new genre, has arrived. The bar has been raised and is flying over everyone's head." - Victoria Alexander (FILMSINREVIEW.COM) 



This is a bit much. 

I mean, it does live up to the hype much more than SNAKES and it does have plenty of genuine laughs, but come on! It says more about how lame comedies have become in the last several years if this is being lauded so highly. As for all the variations on the labeling of BORAT as an "equal opportunity offender" that critics have been tirelessly making, I was offended like Jerry Seinfeld would be "as a comedian" at how easy cheap and obvious some of the lines were - for example:

Borat Sagdiyev: This is Natalya. (He Kisses her passionately) She is my sister. She is number-four prostitute in whole of Kazakhstan. (Natalya holds up a trophy and smiles) Niiice!



Yep, now that's top-line-state-of-the-art-grade-A comedy!



More later...