That's what went through my head when I was searching through Warner Archive Instant's offering's and came across "Norman, Is That You?". For those of us who relish forgotten curios like this, Warner Archive Instant is the only game in town. It's for film enthusiasts who don't need every film to be a 5-star classic, who want to dig into the old, dusty stuff that has lay forgotten in the corner of pop culture, like this strange piece of 70's detritus.
Foxx plays Ben Chambers who travels to Los Angeles to visit his son, Norman, after his wife takes off with his brother for a tryst in Mexico. Unbeknownst to Ben, Norman is gay and living with his boyfriend Garson (Adam Sandler's director of choice: Dennis Dugan). Eventually, despite Norman's protests, Garson reveals the truth to Ben. This turns his world upside down and the rest of the picture consists of him struggling with his son's homosexuality, until his wife, Beatrice (Pearl Bailey) returns. He buys books on the subject at a store across from The Brown Derby (where the clerk asks him if he wants to put it on his Diner's Club card; I love the 1970s), hires a hooker (Cleopatra Jones herself: Tamara Dobson), and even try's to strangle Garson, but is foiled by his bad back.
At the 20 minute mark I smashed my TV, lit the rubble on fire and drove over it with my car. I did this because, at this point, a being of pure evil shows up: Madame.
Perhaps a little context and background might help with this. Madame is a puppet who is a sassy, aging movie star. Madame and her puppeteer Wayland Flowers were big business back in the day, making appearance's all over the television world, including director George Schlatter's "Laugh-In". This, I imagine, is how he came to cast both in "Norman, Is That You?"; Flowers plays Norman and Garson's upstairs neighbor, Larry Davenport.
As a child, for some unknown reason (probably her horrifying visage), Madame filled me with such pure fear that I can't even think of something to compare it to. When her TV show, "Madame's Place" was on, my 4 or 5 year old self was terrified to flip through the channel's, lest I catch a glimpse of her, or even more accurately: I was scared that she would see me. So, when she appeared in close-up in this movie, I didn't actually smash my TV. Instead, I sobbed in the fetal position in the corner for a half hour, until someone walked into the room and asked me why I, a 34 year old man, was crying on the floor like a baby. I pointed to the TV, where Madame's image still showed, peering forward through time, from 1976 to 2014, letting me know I'm never safe. They looked at the TV, and then me, with a confused, sad look and then hurried from the room. "Exactly!", I shouted, "Exactly!" Every kid has a bogeyman, and mine was a puppet of a bawdy old broad. At one point in the movie, Larry disappears with Madame, reappearing with a not as frightening, but way more offensive puppet of a sassy black woman, at which point I was not only weeping from fear, but cringing in embarrassment, as well.
Speaking of cringing, there's a number of moments in this picture that elicit said reaction. There's the phone call scene where Ben attempts to reach his wife at the Mexican motel she is staying at. Instead, he engages in some bad sketch comedy with the two stereotypes working the desk. The humor in this scene supposedly comes from the incongruous subtitles for the Spanish gentleman, but it's baffling why anyone would think it's funny. It should be noted that one of those desk clerks is played by awesome "Mad" magazine and "Groo" cartoonist, Sergio freakin' Aragones. If anyone knows how he came to be cast in this, please let me know.
Later, after returning from a night carousing at the gay hotspot's with Garson (more on that in a bit), Ben has a dream where he is accepting the award for "Homosexual Dry Cleaner of the Year". This features a wig wearing Foxx doing a swishy gay impression that manages to be unfunny and surreal at the same time. Oh, and when he is awoken by Garson, he yells, "Rape! Rape!"...yep.
Everything about the movie isn't terrible, though. It's impossible for something starring Foxx to be entirely humorless, and there are some laughs scattered throughout. He and Dugan actually have some decent chemistry together, and there's an odd sweetness to their scenes. After Ben attempts to murder him, Garson makes dinner for them both, and then the two go out on the town. Madame, that eldritch mockery of the human form, makes another appearance when they take in Larry's stage show. Later, Ben indicates that they also went to, "...that other place, where the guy imitated Dinah Shore." It's difficult to believe that mere hours after attacking Garson in a rage, Ben would enjoy taking in a drag show with him.
Schlatter's visual style is that of someone who made a career in television and most of the movie looks like a TV show. The cinematography of the picture, shot-on-video then transferred to film, gives it an aesthetic that exists in a lo-fi limbo between television and cinema.
This movie is as weirdly ham-handed and clumsy as you'd expect given the combination of subject matter and talent involved. It's like your conservative uncle trying to explain how he's open-minded, and how OK he is with "those people"; it's heart is in the right place, but the more it goes on, the more you wish it would stop.
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