Ironically, Googling benders for no reason at all that I can think of, I landed on drunkard.com. They profiled The Lost Weekend in their piece on benders--please enjoy their snippet:
The Lost WeekendDirected by Billy Wilder, 1945
This groundbreaking and gritty view of the bender captured the Best Picture Oscar for good reason. Though essentially an anti-drinking piece, it also contains some choice pro-drinking dialogue.
Best Scene: Ray Milland as Don Birnam has a tete-a-tete with bartender Nat about the pros and cons of the hard stuff:
“It shrinks my liver, doesn't it, Nat? It pickles my kidneys, yeah. But what does it do to my mind? It tosses the sandbags overboard so the balloon can soar. Suddenly I'm above the ordinary. I'm competent, supremely competent. I'm walking a tightrope over Niagara Falls. I'm one of the great ones. I'm Michelangelo, molding the beard of Moses. I'm van Gogh, painting pure sunlight. I'm Horowitz, playing the Emperor Concerto. I'm John Barrymore before the movies got him by the throat. I'm Jesse James and his two brothers--all three of 'em. I'm W. Shakespeare. And out there it's not Third Avenue any longer— it's the Nile, Nat, the Nile—and down it moves the barge of Cleopatra."
2 comments:
"Days of Wine and Roses" is another great one about alcohol abuse. Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick. Heartbreaking.
I like "Leaving Los Vegas." It was the last good film Nick Cage made.
Post a Comment