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"One of the cardinal rules," the title, every aspiring trickster must heed it. Executive (Tom Smothers) and vice-president (John Astin) enter on opposite sides of the corporate frame, a concealed split-screen sends each their own way during the opening credits. (Another Brian De Palma maneuver swiftly follows, an overhead tracking shot in the lavish apartment finds a rat maze to go with the rat race.) A chat with the old generation in the wardrobe, then a "new way of life" for the square nonconformist. "May I help you?" "Yes, I would like to see something seedy," cf. Hiller's The Lonely Guy. Obsessive specialists everywhere, piano tuners and brassiere salesmen and soft-shoe conjurers with rabbits in their top hats. Office versus road, an outsider's fear of success, as befits the underground artist's move into the mainstream studio. Winner's I'll Never Forget What's'isname for the dilemma, again there's Orson Welles' dignified drollery as the mentor. "At one time I thought the tap-dancing magician craze would make a lot bigger splash than it did." The hero's rejoinder to a heckler ("Up yours, fella!") receives the master's approval, meanwhile his motto ("Live life at the gut level") becomes just another company commodity, so it goes in business. (If De Palma sees the humorist in Hitchcock, he also sees the moralist in Tashlin.) Sellouts and dropouts, a cramped party tableau punctured by Allen Garfield's vehement vaudeville turn, a pilot up a tree with an early glimpse of Bob Einstein. Katharine Ross as "Terrific-Looking Girl" in the back of a Greyhound adduces The Graduate, and the whole thing is retooled as Phantom of the Paradise. With Susanne Zenor, Samantha Jones, Hope Summers, Charles Lane, Robert Ball, George Ives, and M. Emmet Walsh.
--- Fernando F. Croce |