Come back to the middle 1960s, when America’s hottest film student Francis Ford Coppola started on his path to directorial glory by parlaying his UCLA film school thesis film into a full-on studio production. A canny synthesis of youth trends and Coppola’s own weird sense of humor, the free-form comedy announces ‘I’ve arrived.’ The music is by The Lovin’ Spoonful and the cast is stellar: Peter Kastner, Elizabeth Hartman, Geraldine Page, Rip Torn, Julie Harris, Michael Dunn, Tony Bill, Dolph Sweet — and introducing a delightful Karen Black. Plus a close-up look at Times Square in ’66!

You’re a Big Boy Now
Blu-ray
Warner Archive Collection
1967 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 97 min. / Available at MovieZyng / Street Date May 14, 2024 / 21.99
Starring: Elizabeth Hartman, Geraldine Page, Peter Kastner, Rip Torn, Julie Harris, Karen Black, Tony Bill, Michael Dunn, Dolph Sweet, Michael O’Sullivan.
Cinematography: Andrew Laszlo
Art Director: Vasilis Fotopoulos
Costume Design: Theoni V. Aldredge
Film Editor: Aram Avakian
Songs, Amy’s and Miss Thing’s themes, ‘Darling Be Home Soon’ composed by John B. Sebastian
Songs performed by The Lovin’ Spoonful
Music score by Robert Prince
Based on a novel by David Benedictus
Produced by Phil Feldman
Written for the screen and Directed by Francis Ford Coppola

Francis Ford Coppola will remain a legend, no matter what the fate of his new self-produced movie. We tend to forget that Coppola had already made a name for himself in the years before  The Godfather. A major acolyte of Roger Corman, by 1968 he became Corman’s highest achiever with his major feature  Finian’s Rainbow. His screenwriting efforts had yielded credits on films by Sydney Pollack, René Clément and Franklin J. Schaffner. He was also no slacker when it came to self-promotion: the delightful  You’re a Big Boy Now is from a novel by David Benedictus,  ‘Written for the Screen and Directed by Francis Ford Coppola.’

Coppola had clearly built his connections at Warner Brothers. His first studio feature as director would be for the first-time producer Phil Feldman — who would soon lead Sam Peckinpah into his greatest triumph  The Wild Bunch. Coppola put together a ‘youth comedy’ package that covered all bases: location shooting in New York City, a rock soundtrack from John Sebastian and The Lovin’ Spoonful. To star he enticed the hot actress Elizabeth Hartman of  A Patch of Blue and  The Group, and backed her up with the legendary Julie Harris and Geraldine Page, and Page’s controversial husband Rip Torn.

To play the ‘Big Boy’ of the title Coppola tapped Peter Kastner, the young Canadian actor from Don Owen’s Nobody Waved Goodbye, the downbeat tale of a teen dropout who runs away from home. The National Film Board of Canada made sure it was seen; it got shown in our Junior High School. Tony Bill and Dolph Sweet rounded out the cast. The most welcome discovery is a very young Karen Black as Big Boy’s inexperienced girlfriend. Black is adorable in her first real film role.

A Valentine to the New York Public Library.

Could Coppola make the term ‘youth comedy’ hip again?  The subgenre needed a rescue from Sandra Dee and Beach Movies. Coppola breaks the mold by accessing the freshness of student films of the time. You’re a Big Boy Now is, shall we say, editorially aggressive. It opens with a bang: a loud blast of music from The Lovin’ Spoonful heralds star Elizabeth Hartman’s entrance into a quiet library chamber. The farcical plot revolves around the New York Public Library … and sex. Rollerskating stacks messenger Bernard Chanticleer (Peter Kastner) is a sensitive, agreeable fellow with a cherubic face. He’s stifled by his parents. Margery, his mother (Geraldine Page, hilarious) smothers him with unwanted coddling. His disapproving father I. H. (Rip Torn, uncharacteristically buttoned-down) is the library’s director. Seeing his son’s childish antics riding the library’s book dumbwaiter, I.H. decides that his Big Boy needs to move out on his own, to take charge of his life.

Margery has no intention of loosening her apron strings. Her radar has identified Bernard’s sweet co-worker Amy Partlett (Karen Black) as ‘one of those city women’ who could ruin Bernard for life. She directs Bernard to rent a room from the repressed spinster Miss Nora Thing (Julie Harris). Nora’s pet chicken lives on the landing outside Bernard’s door, and attacks any girl that dares climb the stairs. A fellow boarder is the hardboiled Patrolman Francis (Dolph Sweet), who sizes up Bernard as a troublemaker, a potential Public Enemy Number One. Miss Thing will offer reports on Bernard’s behavior.

A portrait in comic cluelessness.

Amy asks Bernard out, but he’s too easily distracted, and only has eyes for the ‘off-off-off-off Broadway’ actress and narcissistic fashion plate Barbara Darling (Hartman). Darling is an exaggeration of ‘one of those city women’ Margery fears, a man-killer in Mod eye makeup. Barbara’s only real friend is her loyal publicist Richard Mudd (Michael Dunn), who works hard to promote her career. She eyes Bernard as easy prey, and makes a game of taunting and humiliating him, just for the sheer pleasure.

→  Bernard is hypnotized by the sight of Barbara go-go dancing in a cage high above a dance floor. He ignores the adoring Amy, who is sitting right in front of him. When Amy impulsively kisses Bernard in Times Square, neon news bulletins flash and crawl across the buildings behind them, indicating his new obsession:

“Barbara Barbara Barbara … Even Now Even Now.”

↑  Coppola and Feldman secured a deal with Mayor Lindsay that made those way-clever Times Square bulletin readouts happen. The production got access to the Library and Central Park and NYPD cooperation all in one swell foop … although at one point we do see one of New York’s finest chasing Kastner and Black through the street. When Bernard drifts through the 42nd Street movie district, the titles on the marquees indicate a late summer ’66 film shoot. Coppola exploits the city streets to channel his comedy vibe of the moment, in this case a particular gap in pop awareness, post- Beatlemania, pre- Summer of Love, when the culture was overrun with images of discotheques and garish mod fashions.

Coppola uses innumerable film student tricks to express Bernard’s clueless confusion. New York is a whirl of rapid cutting and handheld camera whip-pans. On a romp in Central Park with Bernard’s Machiavellian co-worker Raef del Grado (Tony Bill, actually amusing), the camera aims for light, carefree moments like those celebrated in George Roy Hill’s  The World of Henry Orient,  Coppola captures candid action on the city sidewalks as Bernard is dragged through the streets by his huge dog (named ‘Dog’). Coppola doesn’t mind that his loose semi-docu style will be compared to the that of Richard Lester, the director of the recent hits  A Hard Day’s Night and  The Knack … and How To Get It.

A key image for Richard Lester was the spectacle of Rita Tushingham being rolled down a London street atop a metal bedframe, blocking traffic like a makeshift parade float. The TV show The Monkees would run that gag into the ground. Coppola wisely avoids direct steals, but he adapts everything his eclectic imagination can seize. Being an all-borrowing film student means never having to say you’re sorry.

Coppola eagerly co-opts Jean-Luc Godard into his act. The Times Square illuminated news bulletins are a prime example of a Godardian text insert,  but ‘found in the environment.’  Coppola’s uses similar signage to indulge in a creative word-association game: whenever some text spurs Bernard’s imagination, the screen will cut to a brief blip of something to match his fantasy. Bernard sees the letters “WC” above a door, and thinks ‘Welcome Communists.’  His words are followed by a quick glimpse of a ticker tape parade.

A word association that backfires is Bernard’s impromptu fantasy response to a graffiti scrawl reading ‘Niggers go Home.’ That free-association trick leads to the thought ‘Home is in the Highlands,’ which Bernard’s thinking process illustrates with an image of a black bagpiper leading a group of dancing black children down a grassy hill. The elaborate visual pun now plays as just plain insensitive. Just the same, we’re happy that the WAC didn’t censor it.

UCLA student filmmaking’s primary weapon: Sharp Editing.

Is You’re a Big Boy Now Coppola’s attempt to revive the Screwball Comedy for a new generation?  Beginning with the roller skating antics in the Library’s maze of book racks, Bernard’s comic travails are a flurry of student-film invention. Coppola does everything possible to keep things jumpin’. A disaster scene in the Automat is a direct throwback to the ’30s classic  Easy Living. We can see similarities in subsequent comedies reportedly ‘saved’ by hyperactive editing, especially  The Night they Raided Minsky’s and a few others edited by Ralph Rosenblum.

The fast cuts never let up, and a music-driven montage is never far away. John Sebastian’s Lonely / Amy’s Theme is seemingly confected to serve the same purpose as This Boy / Ringo’s Theme in A Hard Day’s Night.

Coppola’s editor is the intensely creative Aram Avakian, who cut the music docu Jazz on a Summer Day but also Robert Rossen’s  Lilith, and Arthur Penn’s  The Miracle Worker and Mickey One. Avakian became a director as well, one with a very different agenda. In 1970 he directed the notorious Allied Artists feature  End of the Road, co-written by Terry Southern and X-rated for some pretty strong content. At this stage of his career, Coppola was working on conquering the mainstream, not flaming out in a blaze of radical outrage.

Playful visual ideas arrive at the rate of about one every twenty seconds, pausing only for Coppola’s well-honed comic dialogues. The whole world is out to humiliate Bernard. Dejected but never defeated, he soldiers on, dutifully brushing the gap in his teeth and presenting a fresh face to the world. Underneath the confusion he’s driven by male instincts and tripped up by poor judgment. Bernard gawks at the girlie pictures, but chokes when his necktie catches in the gears of a peep show machine. For a second it looks like he’s being murdered by the woman in the peep show film.

A killer in Go-Go Boots.

If Elizabeth Hartman was looking for a role to contrast with her innocent heroine in A Patch of Blue, she found it. Her Barbara Darling is a disturbed man-hater who delights in her cruel treatment of Bernard. She dresses like Twiggy, but pins horror stills from Hammer Films around her makeup mirror. Richard Mudd is ghost-writing her pre-fame autobiography, which yields a lulu of a backstory in a girls’ school: on movie night the students squirm at scenes from Roger Corman’s  The Pit and the Pendulum and Coppola’s own  Dementia 13… all except for the sadistic Barbara, who relishes the plight of a man sliced in two by Poe’s pendulum blade.

The autobio spells out Barbara’s diabolical revenge against the pervert teacher Kurt (Michael O’Sullivan), identified as an Albino hypnotherapist with a wooden leg.  How many miniorities can one offend at the same time?  Scattershot stereotype comedy like this is no longer the norm.

Poor Bernard is of course putty in the hands of this mod vampire. To further demolish his ego, Barbara flaunts her attachment to Tony Bill’s handsome Raef. Even that ends, when a wave of publicity convinces her that she’s now far too important to be seen with Raef, as well.

“Don’t eat too much, don’t stay out too late, don’t go to suspicious places to play cards, and stay away from girls. But most of all, Bernard, try to be happy.”

Geraldine Page receives extra marks for clowning above the call of duty, attending to Bernard as if he were still in diapers. At the boarding house, the gravel-voiced patrolman Francis secretly adores the fragile Miss Nora Thing, but has a hard time expressing himself. Julie Harris’s Nora relates her own absurd tale of frustrated romance. Informing on Big Boy, Nora finds herself locked with Bernard’s father in a secret library vault, where he keeps priceless ancient books and controversial erotic texts. Nora’s misinterpretation of the word ‘incunabula’ triggers her rape anxieties. How often do we get to see legends like Julie Harris or Geraldine Page play such broad comedy?

The movie reserves its heart for Karen Black’s Amy, who somehow believes in Bernard and is there to catch him when he hits bottom. Will Bernard realize that the girl of his dreams is right under his nose?  Blind devotion is a pre-feminist cliché, but what do we expect from a girl of the Wild East of 1966?  Ms. Black melts our hearts; she has her sweet ‘n’ deserving act down pat. She’d soon hold the record for adventurous roles in a wide range of ‘New Hollywood’ attractions:  Easy Rider,  Five Easy Pieces,  Cisco Pike,  Born to Win,  The Day of the Locust.

Everything wraps up in Screwball mode, climaxing with most of the cast performing a standard ‘wacky chase’ that also serves as a substitute curtain call.  ^*  Instant redemption for Bernard and Amy comes courtesy of a conclusion that plays John Sebastian’s appealing title tune against close-ups of an automated pretzel machine at work. Little links of salty dough are tied up in neat little knots… an inexplicably joyful image.

You’re a Big Boy Now didn’t become the earth-shaker comedy of its year, an honor that went to Mike Nichols’  The Graduate and Mel Brooks’  The Producers. But the little film is a special achievement for the first ’60s film student to crash the gates of old-school Hollywood. The critics praised it, and Genevieve Page was nominated for Best Supporting Actress. It’s one of Francis Ford Coppola’s better movies overall.

The Warner Archive Collection Blu-ray of You’re a Big Boy Now is the most improved WAC title we’ve seen lately. The quality jump to HD Blu-ray is remarkable, with a remaster supervised by Coppola’s own Zoetrope company. The transfer is rich and colorful and flesh tones are excellent; all those quick-cut sequences now dazzle, as do the nighttime scenes in Times Square. This is an early costume design credit for Theoni V. Aldredge. We note that Elizabeth Hartman’s trendy dresses still look great, succeeding as do few attempts at ‘with it’ fashions from this year.

In a perfect world the soundtrack would be given an alternate stereo remix, but the original mono was always plenty punchy. Dick Vorisek lets John Sebastian’s songs play LOUD, just how we like them. We purchased several LPs of the original soundtrack back in the day, and only found one pressing that wasn’t distorted.

The disc’s only extra is an original trailer, a manic construction that now seems a bit desperate — and does anybody know who the narrator is?  The trailer intrigued us in ’67 but I didn’t see the film itself until college. If these examples of Seven Arts’ ad campaign tag lines are accurate, we’re surprised that Coppola’s ambitious effort didn’t sink like a stone:

You’re a Big Boy Now
Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements: Original Trailer.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One Blu-ray in Keep case
Reviewed: May 29, 2024
(7134boy)

^*  The film’s main poster art is an unimpressive cartoon-doodle. This is one movie that needed a ‘jolly chase’ key graphic, like Jack Davis’s for It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World or Frank Frazetta’s for What’s New Pussycat?

Final product for this review was provided free by The Warner Archive Collection.

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