GOOD TIMES
US, 1967, 91 minutes, Colour.
Sonny Bono, Cher, George Sanders.
Directed by William Friedkin.
Good Times tries to do for Sonny and Cher what Richard Lester's film's, A Hard Day’s Night and Help did for the Beatles.
As regards film-making this is quite a good job In promoting the talents and style of the famous singing couple. There is a story about making a film in which Sonny and Cher are able to do some acting. They naturally have some songs. They also have a chance to appear in parodies of conventional Hollywood material, for example gangster stories, westerns, Tarzan films. The film has the added strength of the presence of George Sanders as a suave money-making producer.
The film is of interest to those who study directors because it was made by William Friedkin years before he won his Oscar for The French Connection. Friedkin also made such theatre adaptations as The Birthday Party by Pinter and The Boys In the Band by Mart Crowley. Friedkin also made The Night They Raided Minskys, The Exorcist and The Wages of Fear remake, The Sorcerer.
1. How enjoyable a film? A film of the sixties? responses of the sixties' audience? How does it seem now?
2. How much of the success of the film depend on the personalities of Sonny and Cher? Their image, music? Television background, their marriage? How much does the film not depend on this? The impact at the time of the popularity of the couple? Later?
3. How does the film fit into the style of the sixties with so many features promoting singers and television personalities? The creative effort to promote the image and the personalities? The happy blend of realism and fantasy?
4. How important was the cinema and visual styles the use of colour, the various locations, the various fantasies, for example the West, the jungle, the private eye world? The impact of television styles on this film? Musical productions, Various styles, pacing, editing?
5. The success of having a film about the making of a film? (Having one's cake and eating it - making a film and yet being able to criticise? the film world and its phoniness?) The world of big, business, tycoons and their control, money? The plot, good taste, and contrived plots? Contracts? The cynical spurning of the film world and deriding it? Yet the advantages, and the freshers of this film?
6. Sonny and Cher as television personalities? As characters within this film? the attempt at presenting a natural image? The particular qualities of each? Their qualities of being together, especially In song and comedy? What was the image? Clean cut, Innocent, simple? how was this illustrated by the songs and their presentation?
7. The choice of George Sanders to play the role of Mordicus? The image of the tycoon? His control, pressurising, his hit men? The humour and yet the irony of Mordicus' presence during the fantasies as the villain?
8. How clever were the parody ingredients in the western sequence - the inept Sonny and the laughing horse? The jungle and its parody of Tarzan and the opulent jungle home? The private eye genre? How much playing with parody? How did this help Sonny's image? Cher's place in each of the fantasies? The place of Mordicus as villain?
9. The question of the screenplay about the hillbillies - American phoniness, cuteness and sentiment, rags to riches? The reason for Sonny's and Cher's refusal to act in it? Their determination to take a stance despite their contract? Mordicus' reaction?
10. The values presumed in presenting this image of Sonny and Cher, authenticity, popular celebrities, the ordinary touch for audiences to identify with them? Audiences identifying with the world of fantasy? A successful promotion of personalities and their image?
