All About Eve

So, way back in the beginning of the summer, I wrote a little post about Ninotchka. Shortly after that post I debuted the blog to my friends via a link on my Facebook. Shortly after that, my good friend, known on blogger as mattgmallon, posted a comment that I should watch All About Eve. His exact words: "Watch the next six movies AS FAST AS YOU CAN, just so you can get to watch ALL ABOUT EVE!!!!!!!!! BETTE AT HER BITCHIEST BEST!!!!!! DOFIJ#)@($*#$)914932094 -Matt"

Well, I didn't get around to it as soon as I promised in my response. Once I got back to school, after the first USC football game I went back to his dorm and we watched All About Eve together. Well... as much as I could get through. I really liked the movie, but I was so tired from the game I only got about halfway or three quarters of the way through the movie when my eyes started to droop and my head started to fall forward, and jolt me awake. I wanted to do the movie justice, and I desperately did not want to fall asleep during the movie, so I promised him I would come back later to watch the rest.

Later unfortunately turned out to be much later. We both got busy, and when we were able to hang out, we usually forgot that I had to finish the movie and didn't get around to it. I finally sat down to watch it on Netflix instant on my computer when I had a little bit of time to spare and Matt and everyone else was busy doing homework and studying.. other things I probably should have been doing. Unfortunately, I got severely sleepy again while trying to watch the movie and was forced to take a nap before being able to get through the last twenty minutes. After three attempts, I finally was able to finish the movie, and check it off the list. 

I honestly did like the movie. I'm sure that it's hard for you to believe that since I just told you that I fell asleep twice during the movie, and took so long to get around to seeing it... but keep in mind this isn't the first time this has happened. Feeling overwhelmingly sleepy during a good movie was also problematic for Ferris Bueller's Day Off. This also occurred while I tried to watch The Searchers, a movie I have not yet written about because I have not yet finished it. It was even more of a problem than Ferris Bueller's Day Off and All About Eve... I was drifting off within the first twenty minutes. So, my sleepiness is not a sign that I did not like or enjoy the movie, but rather that I may have a problem of not sleeping enough (I'm in college, what can I say). 

But let me move on to discussing the actual movie.

Why is All About Eve culturally important? Not only it's a favorite film of one of my best friends', but also because it is probably the Bette Davis movie. Before All About Eve, I had never seen a Bette Davis movie. She's a pretty big classic figure in pop culture. Ever heard the song "Bette Davis Eyes" by Kim Carnes? Well, I'm obsessed with 80s music, so I have. When I first heard the song, I am ashamed to say that I didn't know who Bette Davis was. 

Cut to first semester of college in Drew Casper's CTCS-190 class (A bit of background for the non-USC film major reader: Drew Casper is a critical studies professor at USC who teaches, along with several other classes, 190, which is the Introduction to Cinema class that absolutely everyone in the film school is required to take. He's a professor you either love, or you hate. He's overdramatic, constantly says how much he hates Post-Modern films, and how much he loves Doris Day. I personally liked him and thought he was hilarious and entertaining. I meant to mention in my Baby Doll post that I had been watching the special features... and guess who was one of the people they interviewed for the special features? Drew Casper! There he was in my living room! It was shocking and hilarious.). Drew Casper mentions Bette Davis when he talks about the movie Whatever Happened to Baby Jane a movie that co-stars Bette Davis and Joan Crawford (who we had just watched in Mildred Pierce, one of my favorite movies of all time now, and the movie I quote every time I'm drunk), and about how they hated each other. A huge fan of Bette Davis, Matt leaned over in his seat to me and spoke of the overload of sassiness that must have occurred on the set, and how Bette Davis would be able to take Joan Crawford any day.

For that class, I also read a good portion of the assigned reading. One of them was an essay about one of Bette Davis' movies, The Corn is Green and Mr. Skeffington, which I still have not seen, but I read about them anyway. Both of them (if my memory serves me right) talked about how amazing Bette Davis was, and yet how difficult she was to work with.

With Matt's blog comment first and foremost in my head, I watched All About Eve expecting a wonderful, sassy Bette Davis... and that's exactly what I got.

She has so many wonderful quotable lines in the movie. On the same top movie quotes list I referenced in my She Done Him Wrong post, one of Bette Davis' line from All About Eve appears as number nine on the list... "Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy night."

Now, for those of you have not yet seen All About Eve, I'll give you a little background. The movie is about Bette Davis, whose character name is not Eve (as I expected from the title), but instead Margo Channing, a famous actress. Although she's getting older, she still gets to play the parts of twenty year olds in plays written specifically for her, and has a hot young boyfriend. But, when super-fan, Eve, is invited in from the rain and taken under Margo's wing, Margo begins to get a little bit worried that Eve, also an aspiring actress, might be out to steal her career... and her boyfriend. It all comes to a head during a birthday thrown for Margo's boyfriend. A friend of Margo asks her "We've seen you like this before. Is it over or is it just beginning?". And Margo responds... "Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy night."

Someday I will watch this film again, and I will determinedly stay awake through the whole thing and watch it in one sitting.

I will certainly do that for Matt's movie, which he just finished the first draft of the script for. It's inspired about Bette Davis and her sassiness. It'll be made into a movie, if not by some studio or awesome indie director, I'll pick it up and make it. I would say more about it, but perhaps I want to leave a cliffhanger... so that you all will want to come back and keep reading my sporadic blog posts.

COMING SOON: Perhaps my favorite movie of the bunch I've seen thus far- Rebel Without a Cause.