Movie Details
| Title: | They All Laughed | |
| Director: | Peter Bogdanovich | |
| Year: | 1981 | |
| Genre: | Comedy | |
| Times Seen: | 2 | |
| Last Seen: | 11.16.25 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (7)
- Directed by John Ford
- The Great Buster
- The Last Picture Show
- Nickelodeon
- Paper Moon
- Saint Jack
- Targets
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 11.16.25 | Internet | This Screening is part of event: DVRfest 2025 I forget where exactly but I read or watched or listened to Peter Bogdanovich discuss his career fairly in depth... It might've been a TCM podcast? Well wherever it was, he called out Saint Jack and They All Laughed as personal favorites to make, coming on the heels of three humbling bombs after the stratospheric success of his "first" three movies. Small crews, shooting fast and loose, particularly on this one running and gunning without permits in Manhattan. I watched Saint Jack a while ago and remember liking it very much but never got around to this one. I liked this very much as well. I would call it a romantic comedy but it's a romantic comedy like Say Anything's a romantic comedy in that it's completely from the male perspective and really it's kind of a male fantasy rather than a female fantasy. You have Ben Gazarra with all these girlfriends and everybody's more or less happy for him even his exes as he pines after Audrey Hepburn and you have John Ritter pining after Dorothy Stratten and friend-zoning Colleen Camp after she was ditched by Gazarra. There's also this cab driver who sleeps over with Gazarra? They're literally surrounded by supermodel beauties and the guys are just traipsing along following them all day and night falling in love with them. I don't think the movie's misogynistic - I believe all the romance came directly from Bogdanovich who was currently falling in love with Stratten - but I don't quite know who the movie's for. Aside from that, this movie is like 50% non-verbal visual storytelling at a super high level. There are TONS of scenes of the guys following these women... I guess I should say they work for a detective agency so their job is to follow these women married to guys to see if they're cheating or not... so they're following these women and giving each other hand signals and pointing this way or that and the ladies are crossing the street and getting in cabs and in roller rinks with no bras and you can follow the whole thing no problem super clear. You don't even notice how little talking there is. It's fantastic. There's a guy in this movie called Blaine Novak. He kind of upstages both Gazarra and Ritter I think. He has a huge mop of curly hair and a fu-manchu mustache and wears sunglasses all the time and carries around his own roller skates. He's the third guy working for the detective agency and he's written as super smooth and fending off women left and right. A real Sam Rockwell energy. In addition to acting, Novak co-wrote the script with Bogdanovish and co-produced the movie. Who is this guy? I've never seen him in anything else, I don't think his name ever popped up for me anywhere, his imdb credits are minimal. How did he pop up out of nowhere and make this movie? Longtime readers will know that Bogdanovich was one of two main inspirations for starting this journal. I've been a big fan of his work for years. I've had an evolving opinion of him as a person over those years, but that's separate. He can make a good movie and this is one of them. I'd talk more about the trivia behind this movie but I think I'll save that for the next entry. UPDATE: Apparently I saw this in 2007! I had no memory of that. Did I see it around the same time as Saint Jack? I just read my 18-year-old comment and it's remarkably similar to this. I even called out Blaine Novak as a highlight! Well I guess it proves and disproves the point of this journal. I can look back and see what I thought circa 2007, but very little has changed! |
| 07.07.07 | Netflix | I dont really know why I never tracked this one down before now. I'm a pretty big fan of Bogdanovich's early films... actually I like most of his stuff that I've seen. Anyway, I can add this to the list now... i liked it quite a lot. Ben Gazzara and John Ritter are private detectives following around Audrey Hepburn and Dorothy Stratten respectively, basically having fun in manhattan and happening to make a movie in the process. This shares a lot with Saint Jack in that the location shooting seems authentic and loose, the story is fairly languid in structure and pacing, and it's really more about spending time with characters that you really like than worrying about any sort of conflict. Plus Gazzara plays a ladies man which is awesome and John Ritter plays a goofier younger version of Bogdanovich which is... actually that part's pretty weird since he's following Stratten around. Stratton is undeniably beautiful but damn is she can act her way across a street. I think she's handled well in this film, largely a long-range target of affection never really fleshed out as a character per se, but whenever she talks I kind of wish she wouldn't. Hepburn on the other hand works just as well as a completely different kind of distanced woman. When we finally get a bit closer to her it's not so much following the hot girl down highschool hallways as getting to talk to the really charismatic girl you've seen talk to much hotter guys than you. I don't know if that makes sense... both actresses fit their roles well but for completely different reasons. I must say though... the highligh performance of the film for me (ok, aside from Gazzara, he's awesome) is Blaine Novak as the roller skating longhair working with Ritter and Benny. That dude is great; I loved every second he's on screen. They're all pretty great though, coming up with an endless supply of little pieces of business. Actually the whole movie seems fairly obsessed with non-verbal communication. There are tons of hand signals, quick looks, and minute gestures throughout, all giving off a vibe of realism and that the main guys have been working with each other for a while. Then there's the women. Equally great, all hot. Yeah. This one was quite a surprise for me. It's pretty great. |
