IT'S FRIDAY! Here's Your Weekly Comic: GREENBLATT THE GREAT!

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EVERYONE'S A CRITIC: SCHOOL FOR SCOUNDRELS (2006)

This film, by Todd Phillips, the director of ROAD TRIP, OLD SCHOOL, and THE HANGOVER, is hilarious...at least the first 85 % of it is. But what a fantastic 85%!

I thought it petered out/got tedious by the airport scene at the end, almost as if they didn't know how to wrap it up. By that point, the movie had begun to superficially resemble RUSHMORE with the rivalry for a woman's love between young ingenue and old confident guy. There are elements of other movies in here but it's still a lot of fun. And even a cameo by the annoying mugging mediocrity that is Ben Stiller (vying for the spot as Gen X's Robin Williams) could not derail this comedy, which has a million familiar faces in it, from Horatio Sanz and the Indian-American guy with the Anglo name on PARKS AND RECREATION, to the gap-toothed baldy from BEST WEEK EVER, David Cross, Sarah Silverman and Michael Clark Duncan, who as always is terrific in comedies (see TALLADEGA NIGHTS for his best comic acting performance). Fun cast (minus Stiller)! I didnt' remember much about this comedy, which kind of came and went during its theaterical release, so this was like the best you can ask for when picking out a DVD: solid entertainment and full of surprises.

SCHOOL FOR SCOUNDRELS also did Jon Heder a favor by erasing from my memory the godawfulness that was his other recent film, BLADES OF GLORY, which was one of the crappiest, slapped-together comedies I've seen in a long time with a dumber-than-dumb improbable premise (even for broad comedy...I'm gambling that even LAND OF THE LOST is a better Will Ferrell vehicle). I had just seen BLADES a few weeks ago and it damn near ruined my month.

SCHOOL FOR SCOUNDRELS may now rank as my favorite from the Phillips oeuvre. I haven't gotten around to seeing HANGOVER yet (which looks more OLD SCHOOL) but now I'm extra looking forward to it.

HUMP DAY Q & A: SONAMBULO cartoonist RAFAEL NAVARRO

This was the toughest Q&A I’ve ever had to post. YOU try narrowing down the visuals for this one, it’s an abundance of riches.
RAFAEL NAVARRO is one of the most gifted artists I’ve ever met. He’s a master, he’s got natural pizzazz, and his work is always dazzling at the least. In the last decade or so, he has honed his art, incorporating stylistic elements from his gigs storyboarding in animation (for such cartoons as “Spectacular Spider-Man,” “Scooby-Doo” and “Rugrats”).
But comic books is where his heart and his art is, first and foremost: SONAMBULO, his luchador detective series.
Raf and I are old friends with a lot of water, tequila and margaritas under the bridge. When we met in the mid-1990s, as members of our local cartoonist society in Los Angeles, CAPS , we were just about the only two American cartoonists riffing on old Mexican wrestler flicks: him via SONAMBULO and myself with my EL GATO, CRIME MANGLER series. Only Charles Burns’ great EL BORBAH was out there at the time. Cut to 2009, and there’s already been a glut of luchador superhero comic books and Mexican wrestler-themed films and cartoons (some of them dubious, most of which have crashed and burned). Not SONAMBULO: Raf will debut SONAMBULO LIVES! at San Diego Comic-Con in two weeks at his booth, # 2206 in the Independent Pavilion.
Raf and I were both members of the short-lived, now-legendary (and now-defunct) imprint Big Umbrella, with JAVIER HERNANDEZ (“El Muerto, Aztec Zombie”) and RHODE MONTIJO (“Pablo’s Inferno”), which fell apart (but not over a falling out).




(Here's a shot of me, Rhode, Brad Rader and Raf in San Francisco, up for 2009's WONDER CON, when we paid a visit to our favorite Bay Area ice cream palace, MITCHELL'S!)

Raf and I have contributed to each other’s lucha-themed comics. He illustrated (quite lushly) one of the stories I wrote for my 2003 anthology book, THE NINE LOVES OF EL GATO, CRIME MANGLER, contributed a space-age SONAMBULO strip to my FUTURESHOCK: EL GATO 2002 comic, and way back in 1999, he provided a pin-up (and executive produced) ¡HOLY GHOST EL GATO! (in which even our mutual friend’s cat Cosmo somehow earned a credit!). I contributed a story to his anthology, MASKS OF SONAMBULO.




Most recently, I’ve had the pleasure to collaborate with Raf on the delayed-yet-fantastic full-color comic book GUMBY’S GANG STARRING POKEY (Wildcard Ink), which we finished last year and which will be a winner as soon as the company can get it out (and I’ll alert you to that as soon as I know). It’s a time-travel yarn which starts off on the right foot with this glorious painted cover by Mr. N.


Anyway, if you’re going down to San Diego, visit his table. He’ll no doubt be sketching away in his sketch book. In case you haven’t figure it out (and if you haven’t, check the prescription on your glasses), this man loves to draw!

---- Who are your 5 all-time favorite CAPTAIN AMERICA artists and what did each contribute to making the series great?

Hands down: Here's my personal favorite Cap artists (no particular order, other than when they started their runs):
1.) Jack Kirby- Always forever engraved as the true, and definitive interpretation of the sentinel of liberty...His Cap exemplified the most power, and dynamic energy even in the most subtlest of poses, as well as a dignifying character showing nobility, and pathos when needed...His was the mold that everyone has since followed. When I think of Cap coming to life, whether on paper, or now on screen, his is the one that comes to mind first. Wagnerian and as it is American, his is the most convincing.
2.) Jim Steranko- Handsome as it was equally powerful to Kirby’s, Jim’s Cap was very much the first, true modern interpretation of the character. He introduced fresh, bold, and untried storytelling ideas unheard of at the time, while keeping the original vision and integrity of what was previously established. Cap suddenly had a contemporary graphic sense equal to modern art at the time. Sadly, his run was so brief, but what little he did of the character has permanently placed him in the annals of comic history.
3.) Gene Colan- Again, following what had previously been done, Gene’s Cap captured both the modern and powerful graphics established before, but with a new twist: Atmosphere! His lighting, and sense of composition gave an amazingly new approach to the character, giving it an almost other worldly look and feel. To this day, his designs of the character and his weird villains have uniquely placed him in a category all on his own. Another important note is that he was the first artist to draw The Falcon.
4.) Frank Robbins- My first introduction to Captain America came from this man. His approach echoed back to an age of swashbuckling heroism found only in newspaper strips and movie serials. It was wonderful to see the excitement come to life with his brush and ink work created monthly as a child. Quite possibly my earliest art lesson ever, Robbins taught me to be bold and spontaneous while having the discipline of detail and texture. It was simply operatic and I will always cherish it.
5.) Gil Kane- With just a mere handful of Captain America stories to his credit, his work on the character truly came to play as a cover artist. Month after month, he depicted the character submerged in heinous peril, utter defeat, and eventually, triumphant victory over the forces of evil. With his exceptional poses and majestic anatomy, if there ever were an artist to bring such Grecian heroism and interpretive realism with such conviction and without falters it would be Kane.



---- Is your luchador detective character SONAMBULO alive or is he a ghost, or is it none of our business?

At the moment, we don’t know for sure…I’d like to say he’s just metaphysically misplaced!



---- Which movie is your favorite of all-time (this week...)?

This week as it was last week is still THE MARK OF ZORRO 1940 Starring Tyrone Power and Linda Darnell



--- Kirby, Steranko and Frazetta get into a brawl. Who would be the last man standing?

That’s tough to say! It’s like saying what’s my favorite ice cream flavor! But after a long, and epic battle, I’d say it would be either Jack or Frank, not because they’re any tougher than each other or Jim, but because if they’re not home in time for dinner, they’d have to face an even tougher opponent: their WIVES!

Just Call Me "The MJ Memorial Grinch!"

I like Michael Jackson as much as the next guy, but why the hell is our broke City of Barrel-Wearing Angels , hot on the heels of splitting the tab on the $2 million dollar Lakers victory parade, footing a $4 million tab on this memorial? AEG should pay for it, but evidently the fact that they've invested so much into downtown with Live L.A. has given them a free pass.

How about charging fans for those tickets, even $10 a ticket, to defray costs? Those hardcore freak fans from Berlin or Tokyo will pay up the wazoo to be at that event. That's one way of reducing the tab on this event. Or how about having all of those participating celebrities hitting the PayPal button and kicking in on costs?

But don't drag all the rest of us into this mess. To quote my man MJ, "why don't they just leave us alone?!"

Or better yet, they should've held it in Gary, Indiana, which could probably use the big economic boost. At a time when our state is going under, and there is no money left in this city to pay municipal workers, many of whom are taking furlough days, why put our city through another deficit? Adding insult to injury, let's screw up these workers morning commute to work by not giving the city access to freeways and downtown while this was going on. Hear that hissing? That's the sound of thousands of struggling people's cars overheating because they're stuck in bad detour traffic.

All this city-footed fanfare doesn't make sense. As a tax-payer who may not get my state refund thanks to bureaucratic bungling, I find all of this disturbing.

This really has nothing to do with my feeling about MJ himself. Even if they were throwing this memorial for my favorite singer of all time, I would feel the same way. And like I said, I like his music, especially OFF THE WALL.

(As for the Lakers parade, I say either let the Lakers pay for that or, better yet, how about the losing team pay for the winner's parade? That would give each team more incentive to win the championship...in order to avoid paying for the other team's victory parade...Hear that, Orlando? You owe us 1 million dollars!)

FLASHBACK: The making of THE PARTY (1968)

Last June, I went on an odyssey to do a behind-the-scenes article for the Post on one of my favorite comedies, the cult classic 1968 BLAKE EDWARDS film, THE PARTY, starring PETER SELLERS. Things had begun to fall into place. Current honorary mayor of Pacific Palisades GAVIN MACLEOD, who had beautifully portrayed Sellers' foil in the film, shared his memories with me of working on the film. My buddy RICH CARRADINE's sister, Caitlyn, a dancer, had studied under YURI SMALTZOFF, who played the Mad Russian in the film. He proved invaluable for both anecdotes and visuals for my article.



Coincidentally, the film's produce, WALTER MIRISCH, was on a tour pumping his memoir and he made an appearance at the Westside Pavilion nearby my house. I thought this could make an epic, original piece of entertainment journalism.

The only obstacles: internally at Editorial. The editor-in-chief saw THE PARTY back in the day and had walked out on it (to my knowledge, the only person I've ever met who hated this treasured movie). My other editor had never seen it and did not have the strength to back me up on this movie she had no affinity for. The prospect of me unleashing a full-blown feature on the making of this film seemed dim.

Then my editor-in-chief posed a challenge: if I could track down Edwards and get a quote from him, he would give me the go-ahead. This was on a Thursday. On Friday, I called up Edwards' agency (one of the biggest) and, predictably, they did not return my call.

That weekend, Rich called me up with the news. Edwards was due to appear that coming Wednesday at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica to talk about the double-feature being screened that night by the American Cinematheque: SO WHAT DID YOU DO IN THE WAR, DADDY? and A SHOT IN THE DARK. I now had my in.

That Weds., I lingered a little later than usual at work since the movies were screening nearby the Palisades. On my way out, my editor-in-chief asked where I was off to. He nearly keeled over when I revealed I was off to get quotes from Edwards.

Long story short (too late!), I had my Blake Edwards quotes by Thursday morning. Below is the resulting article, which ran in the Post on June 25, 2008....

If that twist of fate were not beautiful enough, they had announced at the screening (where a frail Edwards, using a walker, arrived with wife JULIE ANDREWS) that the Cinematheque would be screening THE PARTY in a couple of weeks at the Aero, thus giving my article a bonus topical peg.

I'm particularly proud of this article, and I might add that, as a result of this article, a guy whose family home in Santa Monica Canyon was used for some opening footage in THE PARTY stepped forward with a photo album full of off-the-cuff shots of Edwards and Sellers in between scenes. Some of those photos ran in a subsequent article on films made in the Palisades and they are posted below. ----- Michael



'The Party' to Remember: Blake Edwards' Cult Classic Turns 40!

Forty Years Ago, Peter Sellers and Our Honorary Mayor Starred in the Ultimate Hollywood Satire

June 25, 2008

Michael Aushenker , Staff Writer

Forget 'The Love Guru.' And when the 'Borat' version surfaces, rent it when it comes to DVD.

There's no way either of these derivatives can rival the genuine article, arguably the best party movie and the funniest Hollywood send-up ever to come out of Hollywood.

'If I was going to do anything with any kind of commerciality, it would be that kind of comedy,' filmmaker Blake Edwards told the Palisadian-Post regarding his 1968 feature, 'The Party,' starring Peter Sellers and Claudine Longet. 'The Party' screens July 16 at the Aero Theatre on Montana Avenue, as part of a month-long American Cinematheque retrospective of Edwards' films in July.

Now recall that playing opposite Sellers''the klutzy cultural outsider Hrundi V. Bakshi''was our current honorary mayor of Pacific Palisades. Yes, Gavin MacLeod portrayed Hrundi's foil, enervated movie producer Charlie S. Divot.

'He kept you on his toes,' MacLeod, 77, recalled of acting with the late, great British comic actor. 'You never knew what he was gonna do.'

Remember that confrontation in which Divot shouts at Sellers' party-crasher, 'You're meshuggah!' To which a defensive Hrundi responds in his innocent East Indian lilt: 'I'm not your sugar!'

'Improvised!' MacLeod revealed.

On the 40th anniversary of this Hollywood comedy, let's take a behind-the-scenes look at the movie that still has a small legion of devoted fans saying, 'Birdie num num!'

Gwen Deglise, Aero programmer for the Cinematheque, which screens 'The Party' often, believes that the film's 'strong slapstick comedy' keeps local film buffs coming back. 'It's a great draw. Being in Hollywood and being in Los Angeles, it's delicious. 'The Party' is something that needs to be seen on the big screen with an audience.'

'The Party' originally hit theaters in April 1968, sandwiched in-between installments of those more-famous Edwards/Sellers 'Pink Panther' collaborations. But this comedy almost did not reach movie screens.

Both its star and its director were considered movie-industry liabilities. Sellers' health problems, coupled with his unpredictable personality, had contributed to Hollywood's wariness to bankrolling his films. Meanwhile, as 'Party''s producer, Walter Mirisch, writes in his recently published memoir, 'I Thought We Were Making Movies, Not History,' 'Blake had achieved a reputation as a very expensive director, particularly after 'The Great Race.''

The 'Panther' pair was also feuding'with each other. But when Edwards gleaned his idea for 'Party' from one of several characters that Sellers portrayed in 'The Millionairess,' he could not deny that Sellers was the only man to play Hrundi. Likewise, when Sellers read Edwards' 63-page script, he loved it.

'These two men, who had vowed not to work together again, now couldn't wait to get started,' Mirisch wrote.

'To make the project more palatable to United Artists,' Mirisch continued, 'I succeeded in getting Peter and Blake to agree that if the cost exceeds $3 million, they would pledge their salaries toward the completion of the picture.'

Shot in June and July of 1967''on an old Samuel Goldwyn soundstage in West Hollywood'''The Party' was, by all accounts, a party-of-a-shoot, with Rita Hayworth's teenage daughter, Princess Yasmin Aga Kahn, among the movie's partying extras, and three celebrity romances blossoming during the shoot.



What made 'The Party' such a magical movie was not its story but the details. Thin on plot, the Tinseltown satire follows Hrundi, a star-struck movie extra from India, as he unwittingly crashes a Hollywood party and inadvertently wreaks havoc on said shindig at a state-of-the-art mansion, equipped with electronically controlled gimmicks such as retracting bar counters, overhead speakers, and floors opening up to reveal a swimming pool. Against all odds, our accidental party-crasher finds love in na've French songbird Michele Monet (Claudine Longet). However, the hapless aspiring recording artist is dating Divot on the promise of career advancement. Hrundi wins over fellow cultural outsider Michele, even after inadvertently taking down the place by tinkering with the mansion's control box, and accidentally destroying the toilet, which floods the place.

Rivaling Sellers with one of 'The Party''s stand-out performances: Steve Franken as the increasingly inebriated butler, slathering on a layer of slapstick to the proceedings with his incontinent antics. Franken's interaction with his vexed supervisor, his drunken stroll through the shallow indoor pool, his struggle to rescue the roast chicken perched precariously atop a bewigged socialite's bouffant hairdo''all comedy gold.

Also memorable: Denny Miller as the culturally insensitive John Wayne-esque cowboy actor with the bone-crushing handshake, Wyoming Bill Kelso, and J. Edward McKinley as gruff studio head Fred Clutterbuck, whose home becomes chaos central. Oh, yeah''there's also a scene-stealing parrot ('Birdie num num!'), a painted elephant, and mad Russian dancers.

'We opened the door and we come in''the crazy Russians''and I'm the one in the red turtleneck,' said Yuri Smaltzoff, who portrayed Danilo. 'We had a dance scene that we filmed on the green. About 5 ' 7 minutes of dancing. I did all kinds of turns, closer to what's now breakdancing.'

An accomplished dancer who, from 1964-2004, ran the Ballet and Dance Art school in West Hollywood, Smaltzoff, 69, now resides in Studio City. But he was living in Beverly Hills when he got the call in 1967 from a friend performing in San Francisco that producers of a new movie were looking for some Russian dancers.

'We had just come to the United States at the end of 1963,' Smaltzoff recalls. 'I was working at the Metropolitan Opera here and doing the Pacific Dance Theatre and so on. 'There was a whole bunch of people, mostly American dancers' at the West Hollywood audition, recalled Smaltzoff, who landed a three-week dancing contract. 'We did not formally rehearse for the movie. Everyone was a pro.'

Smaltzoff (who, incidentally, appeared in a 1971 episode of 'Mission Impossible', starring the Palisadian Peter Graves, also titled 'The Party') remembered being on stand-by, watching them shoot 'the food scenes, with Stephen Franken and Peter Sellers doing his improvisations, and the chicken flying onto the woman's wig.

'When Claudine was singing, Peter would come out from behind the bushes, during that scene when he had to go to the bathroom ' it was all improvised.' Every time Sellers came up with new shtick, 'he had a [script] lady with a telephone book sized book and she would put it in the script.'

'The Party' was the first time people knew Blake was dating Julie [Andrews, who wed Edwards in 1969],' MacLeod recalled.

'I've been on many films since then and before,' Smaltzoff said. 'He kept a familial atmosphere. Every day, Julie Andrews was there just to watch Blake work.'

Another on-set presence was Sellers' third wife, Britt Ekland.

'She worried about him,' Smaltzoff said of the Swedish actress. The scene in which Sellers climbs out of a bathroom window and onto a roof, after busting the toilet and flooding the place, made Ekland nervous. 'They had big arguments. They were very temperamental, but she loved him and she was there every single day.'

Longet's great love, Andy Williams, was also present every day, 'dressed to the teeth, shaved, wearing very expensive stuff, shirts made out of snakeskin,' according to Smaltzoff. 'He was doting on her.'

'As soon as I got on the set,' Smaltzoff continued, 'we dancers wanted to be fit. I would do my warm-up. I had the girls join in. Claudine and the girls [were excercising] with it me.'

Evidently, more than a few crew members noticed.

'Blake called me in. I thought I was in trouble. He said to me, 'You know, you solved my problem. From the moment you came on the set, the crew didn't go out for lunch. They wanted to see the girls exercising. Now they're on time and I don't have to argue with them to come back from lunch.''

During lunch breaks, the famous actresses''Andrews, Longet and Ekland''formed a clique.

'They called it the Num Num Club,' Smaltzoff said. 'The girls would put food on this big table, where at the end was the parrot in the cage [from the 'Birdie num num' scene). They'd bring in homemade food in brown bags. They would switch the bags. They'd compete making the meals, desserts. This Num Num Club was a big deal on the set, which shows you the comaraderie. Truly a family affair.'

Edwards even stuck his fiddle-playing doctor into the film as a violinist.

Smaltzoff was originally contracted as a dancer for three weeks, but he also wound up collecting hazard pay and acting wages (as well as SAG membership) for playing opposite Sellers in a scene cut from the film. He made enough money to send his mother to Europe with $1,000, and he still receives 'Party' residuals''as recently as last month.

For this film, the party actually started a year before with the release of the 1967 film that Edwards (by his own admission) pays homage to: French actor/director Jacques Tati's 'Play Time.' Considered the iconic Tati's masterpiece, 'Play Time' is playful yet an ominous and prescient glimpse into society's increasingly technology-dependent future. 'Play Time' featured the return of Tati's signature character from 'Mr. Hulot's Holiday' and 'My Uncle' (years later, the Hulot character would inspire an English version in Mr. Bean). Tati painstakingly built the film's elaborate Modernist sets from scratch, including the climax's nightclub. In fact, the long 'Play Time' shoot (1964-67) bankrupted Tati for a decade afterwards.

Unfortunately for its director, 'Play Time' hit theaters during the student riots of 1967 and tanked at the French box office. But Edwards, who had seen an early cut, was quick to embrace the genius in Tati's epic and champion the 70 mm cosmopolitan comedy, which utilizes language only as atmospheric flourishes. Edwards was so taken by 'Play Time''s style that he originally intended to shoot his 'Party' sans dialogue''which explains why passages hang exclusively on Sellers' and Franken's physical comedy.

'I loved it,' Edwards, 85, told the Post, of Tati's film. 'How I transferred that adoration to 'The Party,' I'm not sure. When I was a kid, I had absorbed Laurel and Hardy, along with so many of those great silent films. It's just a whole body of things that informed it.'

Edwards paused, looked over at Andrews, and added, perhaps half-joking, 'The two people I found most inspirational on the movie were my therapist and my wife.'

Prior to the 1970s, when his star soared with a pair of memorable long-running TV roles, MacLeod had a long association with 'The Party''s legendary director, going back to movies 'High Time' and 'Operation Petticoat,' and the 'Peter Gunn' TV pilot. Naturally, MacLeod knew Edwards' career-long composer, Henry Mancini, who scored 'Party.' Mancini composed 'Tipsy' for Bugsy McKenna, MacLeod's inebriated bad guy on 'Mr. Lucky.'

'He was a director who trusted when you brought ideas,' MacLeod said of Edwards. 'Nothing was as loose as 'The Party.' You could rehearse it and then do it. He was innovative.'

MacLeod was 36, married with four kids, and living in Granada Hills when Edwards phoned in 1967.

'He said, 'I want you to do this character,'' MacLeod recalled. 'He sent me three pages. It was basically just an outline.

'Of course, that was what Sellers worked from. Blake had a monitor on top of the camera, we'd rehearse it, but redo the whole thing.'

Smaltzoff recalled that Edwards was the first filmmaker he had ever seen 'with a huge console' videotaping the dailies instead of waiting for filmed scenes to be developed, a process Jerry Lewis invented while directing 'The Ladies' Man.'

'Party''s opening, the doomed film shoot (one of the great comedy set-ups not to be ruined here), was filmed in Lancaster.

'Outside of the mansion, when I drove the Bentley in,' MacLeod recalled, 'that was way up in the Trousdale Estates, but the mansion set itself was all built on the [Goldwyn] soundstage.'

Despite Sellers' dark-skinned impersonation of an East Indian, 'The Party' is too sweet-natured to be racially insensitive.

Lest anyone be annoyed with Sellers' sympathetic portrayal of Hrundi (owner of a three-wheeler Morgan and a monkey named Apu), they will probably hit the roof over the Hindi caricatures in the just-released 'Love Guru.' Edwards appears to be editorializing via Miller's boorish movie star with the bone-crushing handshake, who seems to encapsulate a certain brand of culturally tone-deaf Americanism that wreaks of condescension and ignorance, as he refers to Hrundi as an 'Injun,' 'cute little fella,' and 'critter.' If anything, 'Party' sides with its dark horse protagonist, who ultimately triumphs over the patronizing partiers and wins Michele's comely hand.

Jason Simos, American representative for the Peter Sellers Appreciation Society (www.petersellersappreciationsociety.com), works in publicity for Focus Features in New York. As he views it, 'Bakshi may be marginalized and (hilariously) disaster-prone, but, as he says late in the film in response to Divot's question/attack, 'Who do you think you are!' ' 'I do not think; I know who I am.''

The anarchic party motif appears to run throughout Edwards' oeuvre, from 'Breakfast at Tiffany's,' to 'Pink Panther' to 'What Did You Do in the War, Daddy?' Yet none could top 'Party''s over-the-top finale.

By the film's third act, those crazed Russians arrived to throw the mansion party into overdrive, and Clutterbuck's daughter returns with her college friends and a hippie-fied baby elephant painted over with peace slogans. When Hrundi explains that, where he comes from, elephant desecration is verboten, the teens giddily embark on washing the elephant, kicking up a soap storm of suds that overtakes the entire mansion. As the movie''and the bubbles''reach a crescendo, so does the chaos. Yes, this is one of those films where every character''including the elephant''falls into the swimming pool.

'It would take half a day or more to get the water out, and clean the pool [of elephant feces],' Smaltzoff said.

Miraculously, 'Party' came in just under $3 million.

April 4, 1968. 'The Party''s Westwood premiere was a muted affair, dampened by Martin Luther King's assassination that day. Talk about a 'Party'-killer!

At the time of its release, 'Party' garnered mixed reviews. Roger Ebert loved the film, save his reservations with the overstuffed ending. A Time magazine critic cited 'Party''s 'occasional humor,' commenting, 'most of the evening is just about as trite and tedious as a real-life party would have been with such a stereotyped guest list'the ad-lib approach'is not a swinging riot of originals but a parade of old reliables'This party, in short, is strictly for those who don't get around much.' The Village Voice's Elliott Stein wrote, "This overextended farce is an ingratiating tribute to silent slapstick comedy."

'I thought 'The Party' was going to be very successful financially, as well as critically,' Mirisch wrote, 'but it proved to be disappointing. It has, however, developed a good deal of cult status over the years.'

According to Simos, Stella McCartney, whose father, the Beatle Paul, was a friend of Sellers, recently hosted a celebrity-packed screening of 'The Party' at her Beverly Hills boutique.

'They could've done three films with the material they shot,' Smaltzoff observes. 'That's why they made those 'Pink Panther' films with the outtakes after Peter died.'

Today, talk of a 'Party' remake persists, with Sasha Baron Cohen ('Borat') attached. However, MacLeod, like many film buffs, is not eager to see Hollywood throw another 'Party.'

'There was an innocence about the movie,' MacLeod said, 'even with that toilet scene,' alluding to Sellers' Keaton-esque attempt to contain toilet paper roll that won't stop rolling. MacLeod feels that Edwards' idiosyncratic touches will get lost in the generational translation.

'I enjoyed working with Peter so much,' MacLeod said. 'It was just an honor to play with him. He was so gifted.'

By many accounts, including a recent HBO biopic, Sellers was difficult, and his professional relationship with Edwards was only one of convenience, furthered by the success of each 'Panther' movie. Smaltzoff does not remember witnessing tension between them.

'Peter had already had a heart attack just three months before and he was already a changed man,' Smaltzoff said. 'He would get nervous and cut people off. He would go talk on the phone'But when he came to work, Blake let him do whatever he wanted. Blake was an actor's director.'

Edwards offered the Post his slightly less diplomatic perspective.

'If I had one person that I would've liked killed, it would start with Peter Sellers and it would end with Peter Sellers.'

'The Party' screens on Wednesday, July 16, 9:30 p.m. at the Aero Theatre, 1328 Montana Ave., Santa Monica. Call (310) 260-1528. Tickets: $10. The film follows a 7:30 p.m. screening of Edwards' S.O.B. (1981). For a complete listing of American Cinematheque's month-long July tribute to Edwards, visit www.AmericanCinematheque.com.

A special thanks to Yuri Smaltzoff for providing the rare visuals used for this article.

JULY 4TH: More adventures with Gavin...plus a trip down memory lane....

I had a terrific Fourth of July weekend in Pacific Palisades, where I was covering the annual parade. It kicked off on Friday with an afternoon hike at Temescal Canyon, followed by a barbecue function at the polo grounds at Will Rogers State Park. I got to take a quickie tour of the Will Rogers house, perfectly preserved. It includes watercolors by Rogers' good friend, my favorite cowboy artist, Charles Russell.



When I was a kid, I adored Russell's art and his master illustrator's view of the American West. He was the Norman Rockwell of cowboys, and the fact that he was a true cowboy gave him a one-up over Remington, a Yalie whose work I didn't dig as much anyway. So I was quite entranced with the Russell watercolors and sculptures at the Rogers' house. That tour of Rogers' house is free by the way (not counting the $7 parking fee at the park).

That was July 3. On July 4, I covered the parade, which was overall more fun than last year's (my first year covering it), although I preferred last year's guest of honor, "Happy Days" actress Marion Ross, over this year's grand marshal, Ms. America.

A few barbecues later, my gf and I wound up at an El Medio party seeing the fireworks launched from PaliHi at 9 p.m. (as they do every year). Gavin turned up as one of the guests (dressed in the Evil Knievel-style bicentennial suit he wears every year in the parade). Rows of chairs were set up in the front lawn of the host's home, facing the high school just beyond across the street. However, the view was obstructed, so we spent a half an hour staring at silhouettes of the palm trees across the street, with fireworks exploding behind them. It was ridiculous and hilarious. But I don't want to sound like I'm ragging on the affair, the party was a lot of fun, and once you've seen fireworks, they don't really change much from year to year.



Facebook is a Pandora's box from the past. Above is a photo of myself (far right) and my longtime buddies Eric (white shirt, probably doing his best Cagney) and Rich (print shirt), circa our Fairfax High years, which a mutual friend posted. The metalhead in the back was someone I didn't know too well in h.s. This photo cracks me up, it's very Rat Pack meets Beastie Boys (with a touch of Twisted Sister).

Happy Birthday, America!