Woof! It's another 'First & Last' game.
Thursday, August 10, 2023 at 9:00AM Can you guess the movie from its first and last shot?
The answer once you scroll down is after the jump...
That's Fred MacMurray and screen son (and shaggy friend) in Disney's The Shaggy Dog (1959). MacMurray had an interesting double-career, playing morally questionable men in adult-oriented dramas and noirs, while also playing loveable dads in movie comedies and sitcoms.
The Shaggy Dog is one in a long but sparsely populated subgenre of lycanthropic-adjacent movies that aren't horror films but fantasies or comedies in which a person shapeshifts into an animal. The Shaggy Dog later had a sequel in The Shaggy D.A. (1976) in which MacMurray's character's son (now grown up) starts transforming again. It's now streaming on Disney+.
I was randomly thinking of these movies the other day when I wondered what was happening with an upcoming Searchlight film called Nightbitch, directed by the very talented Marielle Heller, in which six-time Oscar nominee Amy Adams plays a frustrated stay-at-home mom who is possibly turning into a dog? It's in Post Production now. It sounds quite risky but Marielle Heller's directorial career has been bangers only: Diary of a Teenage Girl (2015), Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018), A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019), and the filmed Broadway show What the Constitution Means To Me (2020). On the side she's also a quietly excellent actress --see her shouldabeen Emmy nominated work in The Queen's Gambit as the protagonists complicated mom.
Have you ever seen the Shaggy Dog movies? Are you looking forward to Nightbitch?
Disney, Fred MacMurray, Marielle Heller, comedy, dogs, first and last
Reader Comments (5)
Also starring Jean Hagen, Annette Funicello and poor Tommy Kirk.
These photos prompt memories of summer nights lying in old blankets on the roof of my parents’ car at the local drive in. We snacked on popcorn made at home and packed in brown paper lunch sacks.
This was a film I grew up on as a child. Goddamn you Disney you anti-Semetic/homophobic fuck for blackballing Tommy Kirk.
This is when Fred started his "father" phase. He had played bad guys in so many films and after The Caine Mutiny, allegedly an audience member slapped him and shamed him for his character's behavior. Fred tried to remake his image after that and transferred to friendlier roles. The Apartment was the last time he played a villain.
Yes! I’m looking forward to “Nightbitch”. I wasn’t that interested until I saw Marielle Heller was the director. I want to see everything she directs/ acts in.
I was hesitant about Heller at first. It’s like reading a great author for the first time. It takes a while for it to click and to begin to understand how the author is working.
One thing I love about Heller is she shows you those moments that you rarely see on screen, and yet immediately recognize. And you wonder why don’t we see this more often, why is this elided over? It deepens our understanding and changes the way we think about a character or
a situation.
Amy Adams, as the artistic partner in this, is an artist who has always been interested and game for unusual moments and ways of seeing.
For myself, I would almost* be perfectly happy to see the Director and Best Actress slates filled with these Director/ Actress duos:
Marielle Heller/ Amy Adams
Greta Gerwig/ Margot Robbie
Celine Song/ Greta Lee
Kelly Reichardt/ Michelle Williams
Justine Triet/ Sandra Hüller
*almost... because my #1 choice for Director is still Denis Villeneuve for “Dune”. The movie that was “unfilmable” but turned out a financial success, good, well acted, fun, spectacular looking, with the working conditions under this director being professional, respectful, and appreciative.