The story of the two astronauts stuck in the International Space Station for (possibly) an 8 month visit instead of the original planned 8 days reminded me of a Jerry Lewis film from the 1960's. I really didn't remember much about it, except that it didn't seem very funny when I was a kid, and that it made me a bit uncomfortable because it was essentially a sex comedy before I was anywhere near understanding sex.
Googling the topic, I see that it called Way...Way Out (a title with an unusual emphasis on punctuation), and the Wikipedia entry about it confirmed the one aspect I could recall - that near the start there were male astronauts on the Moon who were going crazy because they had been away from women for too long. Not having access to women drives men nuts, obviously [sarc!]. This did not really compute to my boyhood brain. It's a curious thing, I think, that as a kid you can understand that something significant happens between men and women, but not really have any comprehension of the physical urge behind it. But still, I always felt that it seemed in bad taste to spend all your time obsessing over the matter. (I'm not exactly sure what made me naturally conservative in that respect.)
It is a pretty odd conceit for a film, given that 1966 was not all that long from World War 2 and the lived experience of a lot of men who had to have gone a long time without sex who didn't go nuts (for that reason, anyway). And now, we have lots of men on long, long stays in the ISS without any reports of insanity breaking out. I'm presuming that no sex with visiting females has ever happened there - although I guess any astronauts who did so engage wouldn't be telling anyone any time soon. But the place has barely enough water for decent normal hygiene, let alone additional washing required due to sexual activities.
Anyway - I've never been a fan of the "male sexual desperation" genre of comedy. Although, now that I think of it, should I count Spielberg's 1941 as an exception? I really like that film for a lot of different reasons, and there is one key sex element that is important to the plot. But it's more about a fetish that is amusingly odd, and it's driven by a female character's desire, so I think that makes it more politically correct than the comedies based all on males doing desperate things to get sex that featured a lot in movies in the 1980's that I had no interest in seeing. (1941 came out in 1979, in case you were wondering.)
But back to Jerry Lewis's bad movie - Wikipedia says it make no money and neither critics nor the public liked it. But someone has put the whole thing on Youtube (surprisingly, it was a Cinemascope film, apparently), so I guess I can go watch the whole thing and cringe again, if I want. Lots of people in comments say that they still thought it a great film as a kid, so it takes all kinds, obviously.
No comments:
Post a Comment