Created by Peter Bogdanovich
Leon: “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
Russo: “Who does?”
A sleepy-eyed Ben Gazzara stars as New York private eye and man about town JOHN RUSSO, working for the decidedly blue collar Odyssey Detective Agency (“We Never Sleep”), in writer/director Peter Bogdanovich‘s They All Laughed (1981), a frothy cinematic ode to romance, New York City, voyeurisim and would-be actress/Playboy centrefold Dorothy Stratten, with whom Bogdanovich was involved at the time.
The flick also features John Ritter and Blaine Novak as Russo’s fellow detectives, CHARLES RUTLEDGE and ARTHUR BRODSKY respectively, as well as Audrey Hepburn, Patti Hansen and of course Stratten herself. It’s all set against a late seventies/early eighties-era Big Apple fairy tale backdrop full of yellow cabs, discos, restaurants, roller skating rinks and shiny happy people.
Russo and his team are charged with following two different women for their respective husbands. Hepburn, always, classy, plays the wife of a wealthy, workaholic international businessman, and Stratten plays a blandly attractive young wife who may — or may not — be having an affair with her next door neighbour. Meanwhile, Colleen Camp is a cutie pie country singer with a braying motormouth who had a brief affair with the apparently irresistible Russo.
There’s a lot of surveillance and tailing of the two women all over Manhattan, but it mostly serves as an excuse for several mildly amusing incidents, lots of chances for various combinations of dicks and janes to “meet cute” and, of course, romantic complications. So make no mistake — despite the constant presence of at least one detective or another in almost every shot it’s definitely a stretch to call this a typical private eye film.
Sam Spade told Brigid he wouldn’t play the sap for her in Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon—but these dicks are saps. As Colleen puts it, these guys are simply “lousy detectives” who “couldn’t follow an elephant up 5th. Girls slip through their fingers like sand.”
She may have something. These guys aren’t particularly good at their jobs, continually losing the women they’re supposed to tail. Fortunately, New York City only had about 100 or so people living there back then, so the detectives easily find them again. It’s lucky for these dicks that all the targets (and Sam) continually cross paths with each other.
Fortunately, there’s no real crime for these bozos to uncover except perhaps adultery and a script that doesn’t really go anywhere but around and round. And so, by default, this mess becomes character-driven. Which may be its only saving grace. The characters have little to do but traipse all over the city, mostly looking bewildered, pretty, exasperated or love-struck, but that may be enough that patient viewers may linger, waiting for something exciting to happen.
I hope they don’t hold their breath.
Russo’s the old pro, a divorced dad with a smooth line of patter for the ladies and two annoyingly precocious young daughters (all the children in this film are annoyingly precocious). Rutledge is a bumbling, bookish nerd with his heart on his sleeve doing a slightly toned down version of his usual TV slapstick schtick (he’s intentionally supposed to recall a young Bogdanovich), while Brodsky’s a cocky hippie dude with an affinity for roller skates, women and pot.
Of the women, only Patti Hansen (the sole non-actor in the cast, soon to be Mrs. Keith Richards) as Sam, a tomboyish cabbie straight out of the old pulps who flits in and out of the action, shows any sparkle at all, and she seems mostly bemused at just being in the picture.
Some movie fans contend that this is an unheralded masterpiece from Bogdanovich’s “lost years,” a heartfelt Valentine to Stratten and New York City; a skillful, magically-entertaining romance screwball comedy with amazing location filming and great performances from the ensemble cast.
Others saw it as a real turkey, with very little plot and even less point; a flawed, self-indulgent, self-consciously quirky, smirky awkward piece of fluff whose only real purpose was to make Stratten a star. It didn’t, although the point soon became tragically moot when Stratten was murdered by her jealous estranged husband just prior to the film’s release. (Writer/director Bob Fosse would chronicle that fatal relationship with queasy intensity in 1983’s Star 80).
The murder turned the film toxic, and no distributor would touch it. Even now, certain plot contrivances make for uncomfortable viewing. After all, Statten herself had been followed by a private detective hired by her husband, and there’s a palm reading sequence in which Ritter tells Stratten’s character that her marriage will end suddenly. She then asks him if she has much time left.
Ouch.
When no distributor would release the film, Bogdanovich took it on the chin and released it himself, the ultimate hopeless romantic gesture.
He lost his shirt.
For a more successful attempt to meld the P.I. film and screwball comedy while addressing the vagaries of love, try out Alan Rudolph’s Love at Large (1990) or Francois Truffault’s Baisers volés (1968).
UNDER OATH
- “The film, which is meant to be a witty, liberated sex comedy, was directed by Peter Bogdanovich from his own, apparently still unfinished screenplay… Any way you look at it – as a comedy, as moviemaking, as a financial investment, ”They All Laughed” is an immodest disaster.”
—Vincent Canby (The New York Times) - “If you’ve ever wanted to take a time machine vacation back to 1980 New York where you can do no wrong, this fun-loving movie makes it possible. We’re all in the mood for love.”
— Cole Smithey (colesmithey.com) - “… a plot too tangled to follow until it collapses halfway through. Disguised only a bit better than the undercover pratfall trio, They All Laughed smuggles a web of broken relationships and doomed romances, all under the guise of a wacky detective story.”
— Nick Chen (Half a Canyon)
FILMS
- THEY ALL LAUGHED | Buy this video | Buy this DVD | Watch it now!
(1981, MGM)
115 minutes
Written and directed by Peter Bogdanovich
Producers: George Morfogen, Blaine Novak, Russell Schwartz
Starring Ben Gazzara as JOHN RUSSO
with John Ritter as CHARLES RUTLEDGE
and Blaine Novak as ARTHUR BRODSKY
Also starring Audrey Hepburn, Patti Hansen, Dorothy Stratten, Elizabeth Pena, Colleen Camp, Blaine Novak, George Morforgen, Sean Ferrer, Linda MacEwen, Glenn Scarpelli, Vassili Lambrinos, Antonia Bogdanovich, Alexandra Bogdanovich, Sheila Stodden
FURTHER INVESTIGATION
- The Ensemble P.I Story
Sam Wiebe looks at Truffaut’s Stolen Kisses and Bogdanovich’s They All Laughed.
Report respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.
